the morning fog is pulling everything together. the storm, my dreams, the ride to work. a long-gone song in the distance and its teary laughter. the grinding ache in the back of my skull. milk instead of half and half.

i woke up to the rumble of far-away thunder last night and went downstairs. the flashes were bright, lighting up white squares on the walls in the living room through the skylights above. i counted to 11 before the boom came.

i couldn’t sleep. i listened as the tap on the windows above became a steady knocking and then an insistent pounding. i thought about the tin roof from my house in Eugene, and the pure sound of water on metal. only rain makes me miss Oregon (which is funny–i left the northwest because i missed the sun). it was always green there, even in the winter, but the sky was always gray. always.

i couldn’t sleep. a pain gray as the Eugene sky was spreading millimeter by millimeter into the back parts of my head. maybe it was the heffie at Prime 16 earlier that night. maybe it was the Sam at the Q Club before that. or maybe it was just a headache. i dropped an Advil with some cold water and set my head down again. i can’t be sure, but i think it was awhile before i finally drifted off. the rain was still coming down.

the dreams came soft but fast, like the mist rolling off the Northwest coast in the morning. there was water everywhere. streets were replaced with rivers, and we swam everywhere as if to stroll. the air was hot and sticky, and the city was a giant, intimate party–a maze of houses of rooms like peep shows on an assortment of activities–people on couches sipping beers, sweaty folks banging on hand-drums, and other sweaty folks whose doings were not so innocent. i watched, floating from scene to scene, my eyes like a camera slightly out of focus. pictures of so many colorful, chill indiscretions–mine and yours and everyone’s.

then it switched to the third person, and i was the character in a well-paced action movie. i don’t remember much. just the water and jumping from dizzying heights into it and swimming through department stores. the reel would slow for a split second to let me back into myself–to kiss but to not be kissed back. to feel the hot sun on my back from an island in the middle of the city. to climb a rope to safety slowly, never realizing my danger.

of course it’s the unreturned kiss that sticks with me in the daylight, accompanied by ancient lyrics:

i remember running through the wet grass, falling a step behind.
both of us never tire and desperately wanting…

the interstate was almost a river on the drive into New Haven this morning. the rain had stopped, mostly, but its leftovers were everywhere. grabbing onto tires with that gray, tinny ring of second-hand splash. flying onto windshields. lingering in the air like hot exhalation. sticking to jackets and hair. post-mortem, the drops huddled together to meet back up with the sky, and half of the tall financial centers and apartment buildings went missing halfway up into the fog.

New Haven was disintegrating. at least for the morning.

the rain isn’t falling now, but it remains. stuck to the screen outside my window. gathered in a lake in our dirt parking lot. lingering in the slow song spotted from a decade away, pouring in from Becca’s stereo next door.

and the Mississippi’s mighty
but it starts in Minnesota
at a place that you could walk across
with five steps down
and i guess thats how you started
like a pinprick to my heart
but at this point you rush right through me
and i start to drown

it’s a wonder that i haven’t disintegrated. at least for the morning.

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