When I arrived home this afternoon, from yet another therapy session, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I never am, as I am full of unformed ideas, globular feelings, and untethered thoughts, all of which quickly escape my grasp and leave me sometimes more empty than before. I typically eat something less than satisfying and turn on the news, and I did that again today. But it felt hollow and unproductive, and has been trending that way for awhile. Today, however, instead of just giving in to the empty calories of junk and media, I turned off the television and asked myself, “What do you actually want to do?” Myself whispered back, “go sit on the front porch with that storm rolling in and write.” I wanted to do something different.
So here I am. I am sitting on my porch with warm and stormy winds swirling, and thunder echoing all around me. It seems as though the dark clouds are gathering on all sides of me and converging on this very spot, while I sit here quite in the middle of it writing, and feeling, and watching it build on itself. In my peripheral vision I see lightening blinking, and with each crack of thunder I hear dogs in the distance barking from inside their homes. Are they barking in fear, or are they simply doing their best to shepherd the storm away from their front doors?
There are landscape workers in bright orange t-shirts across the street. They had been sitting in their truck eating lunch, sandwiches I think, when I first walked outside. But now they are each respectively; out and sitting on the curb, pacing back and forth in the street talking on a cell phone, and standing still in the alley way with hands on hips looking up at the sky. I imagine the cab of the truck became too still and stifling, in temperature and in company. But outside of the truck there is more space, and it is cooler now with the cloud-cover and turbulent breeze. The man sitting on the curb takes off his work boots and wiggles his toes. He is rubbing the arch of his left foot, then quickly shoving his white-socked feet back into those damn boots. I know that feeling, that ache of feet. I also know that rubbing your own feet is never quite as satisfying as when a loved one does it for you. However, doing it yourself will usually suffice when one is alone and has feet in need of soothing. Perhaps tonight someone will lovingly hold his feet and comfort him, only after the working-dirt has been washed off of course. I wish that for him. He should have that moment of care and connection tonight. Someone should, even if that will not be my own fate for this evening.
Is it wrong that I sit here wishing for the sky to split open? Enough with the rumbling and warning. Enough talk. Let’s do this thing. Can you just split and spill please!
The sky is not listening to me. Well, if it is listening it is only answering back with grumbling refusals. It is certainly not heeding my command. Silly sky and Thunder God, don’t you know who I am? I am a girl with an empty heart imploring you to spill your rain and fill me up. What better plans did you have today? What better goal than that? And still He simply fusses and laughs and denies my fullness for now. So I shrug my shoulders and inhale deeply. I will settle for filling myself with the scent of approaching rain, that smell of fresh and moisture-heavy air. That smell which carries with it hope and cleansing, possibility and a clean slate…even if only for an afternoon. So, that is all the sky will give for now, that sweet scent of torrential-potential, and I will breathe in again and accept it.
The workers have ended their break and are cranking up their manmade motorized rumbling machines. The grumbles blend in to the sound of thunder and it is hard to tell where one starts and the other begins. They must be glad to have the heat of day cooled for them. I wonder if they feel some company, like I do, as the sky does its own high decibel labor above them. I suppose each of us has work to do; the sky, the landscapers, and me. Each of us maintaining, doing what we must, full and moving forward. All fortuitously in the same spot, gutting it out and grinding separately, but somehow in it together for the moment. Towards what end, who knows, but in proximity just the same. Let us do our work together for awhile.
And now it seems we must move on. Those stingy clouds are passing, the men have finished and are back in their truck and driving away, and me…I gather myself, my words, and my emptiness. I prepare my heart to go inside and do those things that must be done, and as I do, a bolt of lightening splits the grey, the Thunder God cracks and calls out to me, and steady drops of rain begin falling from the sky.
-a.r.
Clearly I felt like posting something different. I tried to write a poem and this is what emerged, for better or worse. I am sure there are grammatical mistakes…as it is mostly free writing and mostly unedited. It as my attempt to write what and how I feel like writing, regardless of form or perfection. I have been writing so much lately that is not poetry…and it has been begging for the same light of day. So here is something different.
sometimesihatemycat 