My rain is my constant… the muggy, moist, and cool. That is my ‘life’...Not in the sense of living, but in the sense of purpose in my will… Always has it been with me. Through each move, every upheaval of home. The countless stacks of minutes of boxing of packing, trying to find permanence. My rain is my constant. Skip from those hours of the past, spent in damp clingy clothes, nights of content, wet dirt, and the dew of day on green grass… to today. Do not forget them…. Hold them as if they were a chilled child in the back of this mind you have been given. Yet today, today there is rain...Rain to remember, the same rain that has held me in its bundle of dark clouds in my early, reckless, and unstable days. It is the same. Where ever is traveled; rain. Florida: the days of heated sky-water, and nights of photography in the cumulus. Growling, snarling animals prowled my clouds then, but the rain, the rain was always the same. Hawaii: Ginger tipped puffs, cloaking their secret of water from the overgrowing world of green below. The timid sun giving way to her counterpart above...Those secrets are whispered in the ears of the islands. Or screamed on the roofs of towers. Mist and waterfalls, sons of my rain; my true mother. When her cycle returns to death,, her last gift is granted to the tops of tanned heads; A collage of the colours, suspended in the ghost of our mother… A rainbow…
But our time is short, other assignments task my tale telling time. Montana: Eternally cold and ruthless when angered into her winter state. No. No this is not where the memory is….it is now….now is where my rain is. And yet here I sit, typing these dry words. *blink blink blink* I can smell the drops now. My open window allows that smell, that deliciously earthy smell to pass through my soul...I am a starving man in the presence of food. My eyes, ears, and nose dance in its needed beauty, but my hunger is not filled. The damp, cool air passing my flared nostrils and filling my lungs as I stare at this fluorescent screen. I hold it in. One. Two. Three. Four. Release. Type faster. Think. Type. B-r-e-a-t-h...Type.

My rain invests the air; Intangible yet unmistakably there. I stop….Grab at it. Yes, its there..she's there. My mother. My Real Mother. Type. The grey light ,squirming through the atom-sized holes of my window screen threaten to overtake the sterile feel of this laptop...I welcome it gratefully. Type. Go back now, to a later time in my memory. Past Florida, hot and steamy, past Hawaii, damp and bright, even past Montana. Type
Here I have stayed for the longest in my unimportant life span. Four years. Four meager years of repetition.... I love it though. I love this repetition…Same school, same house, people, landscape...rain. *blink blink blink, goes the cursor* Neighbors, a strange new concept, nights sometimes too familiar, but the rain. I can never weary of it.
I lie out on the Giant of mine, my trampoline. Weighed down with, not only my pounds, but that of my mother’s. Her waters fill my cotton. My now dark hair. My garden. My heart. *”Hurry!” ,the blink blink blink of the cursor shouts!* Soaked and happy, I roll off to the saturated ground. The crisp green grass tickles my chilled toes. My freezing hair sticks to my neck and face. ‘This is bliss’ I think. *Type* With my gravel covered, wood chip littered driveway underfoot, my thoughts turn to hot cocoa and warm cloths…I’m on my step now. “Turn”, she whispers with her wind. I obey….my world greets me… my repetitious world stares back...but...But there is something different. An unmistakable change, but the same form….Colour… She has changed my colour. My dull California beiges and browns into bright green, purple, and burgundy. She has done it for me...I nod once in gratitude before slipping into the warmth of my small green house, but never forgetting my home. * “Type! You haven't much time! You've Yet to finish your A.P Euro reading silly girl!” Shouts Cortés*
Back now, to this time we call the present. But, is it really a gift? A sigh creeps out of my mouth. Type... Brow furrowed, I speed across this keyboard. TAptaptAptaptap
TAPtaPtaP
TAP.Type


Night storms favor us once a summer. Silent rebellious flashes dance in the navy of the sky. Not bothering with a sweater, my sister and I leap simultaneously out of our beds, to bound, with wide steps, across our room. Midnight, though it may be, we throw open the front door and launch ourselves into our mother’s embrace. She is back from a long journey. She is home in our cotton, in our hair, in our hearts. Waltzing maniacally to the beat of the thunder, our mothers heartbeat, we turn our faces up and laugh. We chant to the sky, hand in hand… ‘Bliss” *”Faster Girl! Fille Plus Rapide” French screams!”


My eyes dart from the grey light of my open shades to my closed textbooks sitting in a forlorn corner. Bite my thumb nail. Type.


“Run girls!” She shouted as a shrill laugh tore through her sprinting body. It was contagious. My giggles turned into cackles, in time with the clashes of the Beat. 5 o’clock, but looking like 8, I ran under the bulge of dark sky. My sister, whose usual mess of white hair was now slicked back and yellowish brown, ran beside me with the same mad look of delight on her face. For some reason this fueled my insane laughter. We ran on. *blink blink blink!* The tall grass stinging my exposed ankles as the three of us cross the darkened field. ‘God this is good. This, this right here is what life is for!’ My eyes and fists clench as I rocket past my sister, past my mother (my earthly one). Biting drops seem to pierce the thin skin of my exposed face. I didn't care. I ran. My ears numb with the whirl of the passing wind . I didn't care. My nose frozen. I didn't care. I ran. * y=mx+b girl! Identify each variable! Quickly now! Time is short!*


Blink. B-r-e-a-t-h. Type. Think.



I'm back in my wicker chair, next to my lonely textbooks. I look back out my window leading to my rai-Thud. My song starts, and I nearly rip my earbuds out. Scaring the lights out of cat in the process, but wait. My music. I hear more than a piercing melody on a xylophone, a bass guitar’s endless rhythm, meaningless lyrics. Through the cut of the symbol my ears see the idea. My eyes hear it as words on this screen. Words, before they are words. Type...I must type... My fingers are stuck. The words fixed there in my vision with no escape. My pupils sprint down to my frozen fingers and are caught. The- the words wrap around my nails, around my ring and on to my knuckles. Tiny lines of history. Choking my thoughts within these hands. My fingers flinch in reflex, and a cry of pain escapes my lips. Hair thin wires in the form of well written sentences slice into my hands with each movement.
Gasp. Think.
My head slide to my right. Crawling along the light wood of my desk like possesed inchworms are more and more lines of literature. ‘Plato’ and ‘Humanism’ catch my eye and travel the trail of wriggling words to their source. Lying open in its lonely corner, is my European history book. Now, pages half white from the missing text, it looks menacing in my mothers’ dying grey light. ‘My words!’ my mind screams! ‘Hold on to them!’ Mind, body and will twist away from the razor threads. Eyes squinting, shut with pain, fingers and wrists spilling out crimson. I lift from my wicker chair Twang! The lines protest and my ankles are slashed mercilessly. Stench of my blood replaces the sweet smell of the wet Earth just outside. Thump! The damp breath is knocked out of my chest. I land on my thick shag carpet, now stained red with my still bleeding wounds. Eyes dart up.
Gasp. Think.
With each small movement, my captors tighten their grip on my life. On my idea. ‘My damned precious idea!’ My thoughts turn to rage as mobility is lessened even further.
B-R-E-A-T-H.
My right arm trembles as its pulled over my head. Spilling blood like a current of red over the now empty page of my text book. My restrained and numb fingers grasp the page.
Breath. Think…….


Open first my ears to the pit-pat of something familiar: rain. Then my eyes stare at the white of my ceiling, masked in the grey of my mothers light. Turn to the right. No crimson. My textbooks lie open. Full of small, time consuming print. Look up. My desk harbors this laptop. The quiet hum of the fan is barely audible over the splash of water outside my windows small figure. Still on, its bright blue screen portrays my work. It reads me my idea:

Life- We are given this gift, the present, for no other reason than this; To gather experiences… Whether they be good ones or unthinkably horrid ones. They make for good stories...which in turn, make for even better ones. *blink blink blink*