The Rain Falls

I sit on my front porch and say goodbye to my wife. She goes to the gym.

I drink my tea. There is a phone call in four minutes. That is enough time to write something. Not everything, perhaps not even anything. But something.

These are the days of attempt. Of planting peonies in the front flower bed and waiting for life to spring. That one there, I forget its name, is struggling to sprout—all the tendrils going in different directions in some frenetic attempt to live.

I don’t like using words like “attempt” more than once in a piece of writing; but sometimes what’s been done before must be done again, just with a little more attention.

All of life works like this. In cycles. Here, not here, then here again, somehow different from before yet eerily similar.

I don’t know what new life looks like except maybe this:

aching back,
slightly sweetened milk tea,
rain falling hard from my roof,

drowning the flowers in abundance.

P.S. I wrote this as a sort of snapshot of my day, the other day (actually back in the spring), while it was raining. Is it a poem? A half essay? I dunno. It’s a glimpse of a day I wanted to share. I’d love for you to do the same. Share with us, in your words, what your day looks like. Leave a comment or shoot a reply—whatever feels best to you.