it's just rain

I should know by now that dark clouds in the distance and the multiblued sky mean something, but we got caught in the rain walking back through downtown with my sweater wrapped around my face babushka/hijab style and I've never been more thankful for the space heater beneath my desk.

It feels like April and not mere days before Christmas, even the rain was warm, not that I'm complaining, because I prefer this to spinning across four lanes of I-90 like that one time three years ago when somehow God saw fit that we didn't die.

There are boxes piled up everywhere in the apartment, the unneeded and broken beginning to be purged, last minute details needing to be considered and planned for, meals cooked from miscellaneous cans to lessen the clutter of the freezer, and drink coffee and dig through journalist's papers and photo albums of times long gone amazed that I get paid to this, and that I have an entire week off with no plans whatsoever.

I want to get to the art museum again, and to the greenhouse, and to drink coffee on the balcony at the West Side Market watching the world go by, to grasp the return of inspiration to write something worth reading, and catch up with those I never get to see.

So much of last year was coming to terms, healing of wounds, and I came to embrace solitude for both its beauty and protection, because those who are alone are less likely to be hurt by others. My lack of pursuit turned into a kind of fleeing, and only recently have I been able to crawl out of the introversion, only to feel that life has passed by, with everyone in my shrinking circles married or dating or getting the heck out of a dying city.

Sometimes I wonder what's left.