The drop

The first drop tingled, and echoed a coolness through his body until he could no longer stand. His bones melted and shapelessly he fell to the parched soil; the drop had eroded worry. Laying there, he watched a seed crack, take root, push through the mud toward the sky. Land multiplied, green grew, and his children traveled in the plane that flew by above every afternoon. Then they returned to claim their land, marking lines in the shifting soil, breaking everything in half. He heaved for sons, land, and wealth that did not exist. Wiping away tears he looked upward to a sky that belonged entirely to the blazing sun. And he cried again, not only over that drop, if it had indeed fallen, but also for he now knew that every hunger could be momentarily sated by a cruelly generous imagination.