Hello, November

Rainfresh: write

             11/28/18

Yes. The rain pelts my dress, my hair, my skin. It gathers in droplets in my eyes, blurring my vision, swirling the colors I see.

Rainfresh. That's what my mother called it.

I walk through the deserted suburban streets. Bigleaf maples toss their pamphlets to the pavement, old paper to decompose. Birds tuck loose strands of yarn into their breasts. Sprinklers yawn. I walk along.

I think of Today, of Earlier, of things I don't like to remember. But I walk along.

I let the hammering rain amass upon my head, seeping into my ears, mixing with the coils bound between them. My brain feels clearer now.

Rainfresh.

I pause at the intersection, though I know no one is coming. A wrinkled helium balloon slinks past me, nervous, ashamed. Telephone wires rustle and bounce. Drops congeal among road-gutter oils and swamped grass. My boots sink. But I walk along.

Slowly the colors begin to change, as the rain interweaves with my irises and becomes something new.

Worries hustle out of me. Serenity meanders in.

Roses bloom in the air, dripping with wax from scented candles, long slick fingers bleeding into one. Watercolored canvases, sprinkled with salt for texture, flap on street corners. The potholes are pottery. The bird droppings are splatters of paint, or maybe pieces of conversation. The squirrels are wreathed in flowers and vines, and my woes sink far beneath me.

The clouds smile, for they know they have changed me. They have made me knowledgeable and new, observant and thoughtful. They have made me rainfresh.

I don't think it too loud because I don't want it to disappear, I want to stay rainfresh and blooming. So I hold my tongue, beam to myself, and walk on. Fresh, renewed, just because on a stormy stroll through the suburbs, I let go of other things, and was where I was. In the moment.

Rainfresh.