Rain on the Fire Escape

She keeps a chair out there that has no business surviving winter. Wrought iron, rusting at the joints, cushion long since surrendered to mildew and thrown away. She sits on bare metal and calls it meditation. The rain comes sideways tonight. It always comes sideways in this city, as if even the weather can't commit to a single direction. She pulls her sweater tighter and doesn't go inside. Inside has walls. Walls have memories. Out here, there's only the vertical climb to the roof she never visits and the drop to the alley she tries not to measure. Her upstairs neighbor plays jazz. Muffled through the floor, it sounds like someone else's happiness, overheard. She catches raindrops on her palm. Counts them. Loses count. Starts over. This is enough, she decides. Not good, not bad. Enough. The rain doesn't ask her to be more than a surface it can land on. She can be that. Tonight, she can be that.