Rain

The summer has different lights. There's the bright optimism sunshine of June and July, deepening into the fiery skies of August.  And as August moves on, the world pales, becomes something else, hinting at what happens next.

And sometimes, you get a rainy night in August.

Clouds form.  Low level, smooth white sky.  The holidays are over, perhaps.  But not back to school yet, not back to work.  Streets emptied and soft rain falls.  Still daylight, but darker, quieter.  Lonelier, maybe?  Rain.  Cement and concrete shines into grey green.  That smell, just there, on the breeze.  The dry sunburned earth of a million back gardens gives up its secrets to the clouds.

Days of summer lost.  The early days of the holiday, that enthusiasm, becomes feverish now.  Something is getting born.  Some new world.  Yet so many faces running inside.  Don't get caught in the rain.  Catch your death.  Keep dry.  Umbrella.  Safe.  Hood up, coat buttoned.

I miss people.  I have so many, many people. The ones I love, the ones I found.  My partners, and not a one of them within less than an hour's drive.  The clouds make the world seem huge on nights like this.  If I'm not careful, it becomes a vice, a grip of cold Sunday night feeling - time for your bath, early to bed, get up early for work, sandwiches made, must be asleep by eleven, iron your shirt, what didn't you do on Friday - don't go out, it's raining, you'll get soaked - 

But that thing.  The big mystery.  Every dull looking life has diamonds hidden in it.  Remember that. Sit around with a roast and bad TV, yeah, it's going to hurt, unless a roast and bad TV is your idea of heaven. I don't have the right to judge anyone, but I still run in fear from that life, because I made myself into something new and pretty that has nothing to do with Sunday night feeling.  Nothing to do with running inside from the rain in the summer time, in case you get wet.

I can't tell you how it feels.  I can't begin to explain.  The rain that falls in the summertime, changing the nature of things.  I took my life and I sculpted it until I looked in the mirror and gasped at what I'd done.  When I could look myself in the face and know that I was happy.

When I met my gaze...and there was an awful lot of eyeshadow involved.  I was standing in the rain.

I'm in a fix here, people.  I'm not going to live in a world of ironed shirts* anymore.  I don't know how to do this, but there has to be a way.

I know what I am.  What am I?
Ambiguous.


Dee X



*Please note, I have never, ever ironed a shirt, not for about twenty years I think.  It's a statement for effect.  The effect is up to you.  "Mild exasperation" is often a good one.