And Then Rain Stopped

I'm standing under an awing sheltering from the rain. Drops clear as
glass-pearls, the type given to the innocent of the jungle, in exchange
for expensive fleece, drip from the awing's border merge with dirty water on
the pavement, forming an ant's Amazon's mighty flood, runs into the gutter
and down a sewer were hydrophobic rats try to escape a watery death. Coarse
fur and scabby tails despised by man occasionally get revenge by carrying
the plague. Empty, street only
a parked car that inside looks like a waste bin. Shuttered windows in the
building across the street, but for one where an old lady sits and waits for
her relatives who will not come in her lifetime. She doesn't read or watch
TV, just sit there and gets smaller every year, waits for a knock on the
door or for her heart to flicker and stop like the burnt out candle that she
is. The rain stops and biblical clouds part, sunlight floods the street and
a river of light runs down the sewer, were a family of the unspeakable lick
grey fur and clean narrow faces, for a moment not fearing man. The old lady
doesn't see the sun she doesn't see anything, not even the ancient wallpaper
or pictures of those long since dead and there she'll sit getting
transparent till someone breaks down her front door.