Rain and Chatter

I was told to bring a jacket because it's raining. The garage felt like a deflated hot air balloon, done huffing and concaving, but eerily still and warm. Sterile. Warm like a piss sample. It cleared out a bit when I opened the garage door, but the scattered droplets that broke in were warm. I'm in a hot rain, and the clouds meander about the sky, bulging and enclosing upon one another with heavy thought and low voices. The droplets themselves are all whisper--all chatter.

Earlier today this girl told me she wrote letters of advice in her personal journal to a character called Wanderer. This girl's afraid of loud noises. She hides in closets during storms; apologises when her problems inconvenience others. I think about her as the rain drops gossip. I think about the last time I wrote. That line from Alice in Wonderland, "I give myself such good advice but very seldom follow it," plays in my head like a song as water soaks through my socks.

If clouds were lined with silver, we wouldn't notice until they were pissing down and we glared up to curse them. If the heaviness of mood came from insy bits of gold embedded in the wet pinpricks weighing down my shoulders, I don't think I'd notice. Eventually, we'd look back, like we did with the Aztecs, at the supposed "waste" of riches. Every cloud has a silver lining would turn into a corporate slogan rather than antique reassurance. But for now, the gold, god, and glory is wasted, warm as blood, crying down the back of my neck.

I'm sweating and I want to melt. Want to be a puddle in the early May circulatory system, and harvest this soft irritability until it finally storms. I was promised a storm tonight on Fox 4 News, and I'm getting drizzles. Wherever she is, the girl guiding Wanderer is safe, but I'm not getting any messages.

The sun lingers, taking care that her baby clouds don't get too dark. The light hits me, hot like the rest. I listen to my drumbeat footsteps and with each something in me changes.

I'm part of this scene; I'm not.
I fill the empty space; I'm intruding.
I give the scene meaning, assigning life and thought and intention to hot gas and empty raindrops; I'm misinterpreting the whole thing.

In any case, I bundle my jacket up in my arms and move forward. Breathing, whispering, remembering.

The air feels hot, and I feel human.