Indicies of Refraction

“Are you coming” ..”give me a moment, I’ll help this time, I promise”. She sat under the summer sky watching nothing as it continued to unfold behind her parents house, the rain from earlier pooling as it dried on the patio below. They had just finished dinner and her father, mother, and brother had all gone inside to straighten up the cooking mess. She should help, it was the right thing to do, but it was also a wrong so minor that no one would fault her, at least once, for committing. Raising her glass she saw the crook in the straw as it passed through the waters surface. Eventually, she did go inside. Her brother was putting the last plates into their dishwasher, while her mother fed the cat and her father poured three glasses of wine.

As it often does, Monday came the next morning. She worked at a government job, designing contracts for civil engineering projects. Damns, weirs, and culverts occupied her days. She knew the people at the office and she didn’t dislike them. However, it would not be proper to say she was their friend. She knew them and she was content in that simple knowing.

She had other which it would be proper to call friends. People she had met before, a few she had met in the city, but not those she worked with. Of the people she knew before she felt close and of the new people she had met she felt close. However, with all of them she felt that resistance which crooks the straw in the water and which hides silica balls inside glasses.

At dinner she would often feel the crook, physically manifested within her stomach. Still more often friendly reflections would blind her. Sometimes the disconnect lead to humor and fun while other times she felt unable to think the noise was so bright. The rainbow on the film and the crook in the glass are after all the same.

So she weighed to herself the value of the rainbow on that of the crook and she knew she could not answer for while she could see the entire crook and in tern knew it well, she could only see part of the rainbow. She didn’t know in what direction the film would spread, but without knowing that the crook could never hope to be its equal.