This afternoon, it feels slikkery outdoors—well named for its mouse-gray sky emitting misty hiccoughs and leaving droplets: they’re everywhere, if you look for them. They fashion ephemeral designs upon window screens and when engorged, resemble tobogganers careening and zigzagging down mountain trails.

Droplets appear upon tips of denuded shrubs like shy dancers awaiting the cue to go on stage; when swollen with the orchestra’s rhythm they hurtle into the arms of lower branches, until the next letting go, until there is no other.  

Droplets also cling to porch roofs and piggyback others more developed before smacking the pavement below; its pinging jostles the enveloping silence, also slick.

Droplets also cling to holly and red-and-white ribbons that decorate mailboxes, and to outdoor lights that frame the exteriors of houses, giving them a lustrous sheen.

Such slikkery waters depths of dryness like grace: a radical re-wiggling into harmonious change that draws gratitude.