What If

What if it just didn't stop, the rain?

How long would it take for the Earth to drink all that it could, swell and ooze and squelch, before we were all washed into a giant, swirling ocean? Would we have time to craft boats, arks? Surely, eventually, the planet would absorb all that water, or most of it, and we would be washed up onto some sort of shore, right? If only we could throw together a raft or a floating house, then we could wait it out, couldn't we? 

But what would we eat? Each other?

I suppose this living through it plan isn't a very good one, is it? It would never work-has it ever before, with so little preparation? Why would you even want it to? I mean, maybe if you started now, eschewed the weather man's predictions and started sawing and collecting, you would have time? But who wants to be that person? Who wants to stand out, stick up, so solid your convictions? I suppose they would, once the tsunami hits and their cars and cards and kids are swept away, eh? 

But what happens then? What happens when you prepared, but not for long enough? Would you rather die exhausted, hungry and wet, bedraggled on your swollen wooden creation? Or fall asleep, warm and comfortable in the running car in the garage, parked with your family tucked inside, buckled up? Would you want to witness bloated cows and engorged fingers and decimated worlds? And for what-just to say you did longer than anyone else? 

To die alone? To die enthusiastically? To die knowing that there was nothing left, nothing else? To die ready?

What if it never stopped, the rain?

How would you do it? Your daddy's gun? Your mama's pills? Aunt Agnes's liver and onions? Would you call your best friend? Have a bonfire and confess transgressions, unmet desires? Rifle through the vintage clothes you collected and preserved, lifetimes in paper garment bags? Would you fiddle under your truck until the waves swept you both away? Cook a soufflé or burrata or cheesecake? Get high? Stay in bed? Would you hold hands, berate your boss? Sit alone? Turn that record on, dance it out, swing around? Flip through scrapbooks of children and uncles and grandma's you would get to meet, maybe, soon? Would you fall to your knees at the bottom of a cross? Would you laugh at the hordes of frantic humans, content? Run until you just couldn't any more? Scream until your lungs collapsed, not from fatigue, but from the sheer despair of knowing no one was listening?

What if it didn't stop, the rain?