First Rain
© 2000 Nina Wilhelmina

At the thirteenth drop I was awake. Noon today isn't so bad then, at least while all else has failed I still get the rain. Small cypress outside wriggled like a terrier
a nd there was a singular anger from the part of the felines. It was
eight in the morning down there at your bay and the choking apartment. I wondered aloud, what were you doing -- bedtime was just slightly over
was it so hard for you to get out of slumber
as is always my case, this October?
I've been waiting for this rain all my life -- and the lives before, if there is such a thing
-- and you know I still am making yet another stupid mistake,
haggling for something I had never wanted in the first place
and for the one thing I should have been content in having.
So the rain came hesitating. Like the tropical sky's crying
but unsure what about, uncertain how come.
Lots of memories it has forgotten, the history
of steaming lakes and the draining of waterways -- such is life, such is being
-- something that has its seed a million years back
always comes as if it is a surprise,
as if an all of a sudden.
I'm still in bed. The rain is still washing down
dust over my roof and
cats are still angrily shivering. I want so much to write you a letter
but nothing comes up beyond hello -- but somehow something convinces me that
whatever I have to say
you already know.
So I just watch the rain from here
and download your presence from the funny kind of air
-- something that will certainly take forever
considering how big the gigabytes are
if you are to be a file!


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Raindrops like in-laws' brawl. Standing there an envelope with no address on. I am at the bottom of the ditch. I am trekking the trail of dirt. I am fried at the core of hell. I have been a roach, a bug, a shameless dog. Begging crawling begging crawling sinking. Yet I dared to dream once. Yet I dare to go too far once. Once is a was. I is an am. The rain falls down noisily down dragging me down burying me down mocking me I am a clown. I dream of me. I dream of bleeding hearts becoming I and me and mine. This piece is no good. It is a scar of mine being zoomed. Dreams do travel, you know. Within oxygen. I wonder if we dream for free. Oxygen is not for free. We inhale an ounce and exhale an ounce. For each that we take to live we die as much.

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The wind rushes in, saying goodbye in chimes. The cats' ears catch them, scratch by scratch. I commit arson. My guts on fire. Thoughts are molotovs. When I die, honey, will you mourn just a bit? The word scares you shits. Funny, where is the cradle I just left? Sing me sadness, sing me me. Let me fall apart, let the wind take my ashes to decorate you for free.

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To a pawnbroker I took
the remnants of you,
but he told me none would ever get
so desperate as to use credit cards on
a long gone madness.