Because, somehow, you forget the rain in Seattle whenever it’s gone for a few days. It’s silly, that you should manage to forget the smell and sound of it, the pitter patter of slender Jet City rain on the trees and the rooftops just because it’s been sunny and blue for a little while. For a week or maybe two it resets, the sky is clear and then it’s raining and you’re amazed because you’ve managed to forget how pretty the rain is in this town. How it feels like it was designed to be wet, to be washed down and renewed, wiped clean of the filth and clutter that accumulates in the sunny weather.

That’s tonight, and I can see the slow drops falling through the coronas of the streetlights and hear car tires sizzling along wet blacktop. It’s just me and the rain and the world, late on Saturday or early on Sunday, however you like to see these things. Buttons is barely sleeping, the baby battering away at her from the inside and I’m out here, more awake than asleep, smoking #2 for the day and wishing this was something more than just this little thing that it is.

Then again, it’s words flowing and that’s all that can really matter. The words are so slow these days. I keep worrying that I’ve lost them but they’re always here when I go looking for them. Maybe that’s it, then. I’ve just forgotten to go looking for them like I used to.

I’m still angry, but I don’t feel powerful anymore. When I was a kid, when I dropped words on a page, man it was all blood and thunder, earth-moving, world-shattering stuff. Bad, yeah. Nothing that was worth having said in the first place. Empty, but empty with that heaviness, that grandeur that only kids have. The shit you drop before you’ve learned to close up and play it close to the vest. Before you’ve learned to let someone else be the first one into the minefield, let them be the one to get blown to smithereens.

I worry about what I’ve got to give to the kid. Kids. I’ll feed them and house them and keep them close, love them to death, but I don’t know what I can teach them. I can talk myself blue, but kids only learn from what we do, not what we say. I can tell them to be strong, to never waver, to reach out for everything they want, but man, can I say that I’ve done that?

I want to throw more words in here, but anything else would tangential. More so, anyway. This is enough for now, a little nugget of something that I can post and feel happy about. Nobody’ll read it, nobody’ll know, but it’ll float out there. Heh.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I read it.

mikE

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