| Let me tell you about these rains:
It is sleepy August and Mum and Dad and Jake have left for the week. I have the house to myself and the cars to myself, even though I don't know how to drive and there is noone I want to bring home. It is hot lazy tired, and I do not need to get dressed. I don't want to think and I don't want to feel and I lounge around in raggedy cutoff pajamas, barefoot. I feel justified with apathy.
Meanwhile the rain smell is driving me beserk. I want that rain real bad. When I say real bad I mean I am going onto the new back porch every fifteen minutes to check if the light quality has dimmed. I am scratching at my arms
compulsively, trying to breathe the musky smell deeper.
When it starts, plop plop plop, the sky an orangey shade,
I go back out onto the fresh raw planks and lie down on
the pale wood.
It is warm and hard, pelting, chilly against my face but
hot against my arms, like a perfect shower. My pajamas
get real wet and then I start crying with the rain because,
well, just because, I think.
When I get back inside there is a message blinking on
the machine. The neighbors want to
know if I'm okay
Yes, I say. Yes, I'm okay.
Yes, I say. I'm okay. In fact, I think I'm damn
near perfect now.
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