It was after the storm. I watched myself in the brown puddle of water. Unrecognizable. A cloud moved behind me. A bit of wind and the surface trembled, scattering my face and folding it into small, moving pieces. The ground was still damp from the rain, and a thick smell of soil rose and perforated my skin. Just then, the water started ascending, drop by drop, into the sky.
I stood a moment longer, sensing this in-between state, neither gone nor arrived, only passing through. The drops gathered for a moment as a thick fog before falling and returning to Earth. The same water from the muddy puddle touched the same ground, the same waiting leaves. I felt that nothing was entirely lost, only changing form, waiting to begin again.