The Water Between

The water you are leaning over is in a round enamel pan on a card table, still, with dust on it. Three bottles stand open beside it, black and indigo and vermilion, with a glass of clean water and a dropper. A sheet of washi waits under a river stone.

You dip a fingertip in the black and touch it to the water, and keep it there. A bead of black sits on the surface for an instant, and then it opens into a ring.

For a moment nothing happens. Then something drops from your fingertip again, without you. Clear water. The black ring is pushed out to make room. Black again. Water. It goes on like that.

The oldest rings have gone gray and crowd against the wall of the pan in lines too thin to count, and do not go over. You tip the pan toward you with two fingers, and the water drifts, and the lines come back from the wall. The outermost is the first ring you made.