Rain

It's raining, yea, it's raining, soaking our parched earth, finally, maybe, my flowers will bloom.

And if I'm lucky, the power won't go out here at work and ruin not only this post but the rest of my computer-intensive day.

It's like fucking Death Valley in Michigan.

We walk and drive and breathe in the mist of humidity day in/day out/day in/day out, and the whole world looks hazy...sky...ground...objects blurred, our eyes exhausted in the salty, crusty remains of blinking. We wear the air like a coat made of dryer lint and warm water balloons, not to be shaken off. Even in air-conditioning, a semblance of ourselves is claustrophobic and closed up, because we know eventually our lives will lead us outside, and there's no air conditioner big enough to blow a path to our cars, to our stores, to the pool and to ice cream. We are all slo-mo and replay, pushing like Harold Lloyd through the windstorm of evaporated water, waiting for the drops to band together and just finally...please...rain. Ninety degrees in the shade. One-hundred percent humidity. Last winter we begged for this, and now we complain...and we bitch and moan, "Please, just one day of snow!"

And now the thunder, and the lightning, and the rumbling, and the splatter of loogie-sized rain on the skylights.

Wish that I were in bed, naked, not alone, in a quiet house, cold air blurting from the vents, sleepy and not sleeping, gentle caresses, the children reading safely in their rooms, a long weekend ahead, bills paid, prospects, a full refrigerator, a happy cat, the phone off the hook.

Instead...oh my real life...sitting bolt upright at a computer that froze up this morning and might do so again, a dozen projects to be done today for marketing people who are now on a week-long vacation (yeah, thanks, bastards), I have no window to look outside, and suicidal-guy-in-loveless-marriage in neighboring cube is sighing loudly and...fuck...divorce her already...we'll all thank you for it. Too much soap-opera with other co-worker who yesterday told me confidentially that he and his wife were separating...political espionage on the other side of the building...when is payday?

I am plying with coffee. I am staring at today's stack of cds...Gorillaz, Mike Doughty, Dean Martin, Tom Waits...wondering which to play first. I am trying to be unnoticed. I have a burning in my chest, between my breasts, something like sleep mixed with caffeine and stress and a longing to be somewhere else.

I read Walt Whitman last night and realized I suck as a poet. That thought is consuming me.

Also the thought of sex toys. A good friend at work is recovering from a hysterectomy, and I promised her we'd go shopping for a new dildo for her. And what would be good for someone with a refurbished uterus? A womb with no view? Do we worry about length? Or go for broke? What about lotion? Can you buy one that talks, tells you you're sexy before it gets to work on your puddin'? Yeah, maybe I can think about that today.

But first.

Some Dean Martin, I think.