The Sun is singing in a staircase, somewhere. In the alley outside my apartment, rain is playing Moonlight Sonata inside an abandoned glass vase; every splash, a note that echoes.

My mind is building fireslime to seep myself in, despite best efforts. I slice the tomatoes for simmer anyway, and the rice pours into the pot with a soft and soothing shhh. Shhh, shh, it says, listen to the sonata, think about the staircase somewhere operatic with sun.

The sonata wasn’t originally called Moonlight. It was years later when someone heard the first movement and thought, yes, this is what it sounds like to see a small boat dancing through the Moon’s mirror in Switzerland. Beethoven just called it Number 14.

As I mash the beans, as I lean toward the window to listen to the rain, as the Mexican rice becomes itself, I think about how the rain meets almost everything born to this world but wouldn’t have any reason to know what a “14” is, and maybe that makes it the most fantastical of titles. Beyond even the knowing of the Earth.

I don’t know how the ancestry of sky showers work, but maybe the rain outside met this rice in my hands when it was still very young, maybe it fed these tomatoes on the vine.

I wonder if the Rain knows what a very clear day looks like. If it sits silent in the stone and sapphire skies and sees itself invisible. Sits comfortably, and sees itself gone from its place in things.

I wonder if, when the Sun has been out in full force for too many days, I wonder if the scattered droplets worry about the small, hungry tomatoes.