Soaked

It's 6 PM on the lawn.

The sprinklers come on.

No one scheduled them.

The system doesn't know

it's the wrong time,

that I'm sitting here

trying to clear my head,

that I'm in a place

where I don't belong.

Water hits my face.

My glasses.

Everything blurs

into lines and streams,

the world reduced

to vertical.

I stand up.

I'm soaked.

Everyone in the building sees.

The woman with the dog.

The kids on the stairs.

The man at the window.

All of them watching me

run back inside,

dripping,

the automatic system

having decided

that this moment,

this exact moment,

was when the grass

needed to drink,

was when the timer

had come due,

was when I was

the thing

in the way.

I take off my glasses.

Dry them on my shirt.

The grass outside

is already getting

what it needed.

I'm inside now,

small,

ridiculous,

soaked.

The sprinklers stop.

They'll come on again tomorrow

at the wrong time,

at the right time,

at whatever time

they're programmed

to come on,

indifferent

to whether I'm there

or not.

I was there.

I was in the way.

The system

didn't care.