You're not the only one to feel alone
(a picture of a moment, 2002)

I couldn't remember what rain feels like. I knew thunder - the kind that rattles your insides when it strikes without warning - more than I had known the rain. Gentleness had forgotten me where I stand in this place of moth-eaten tapestries and faded mental images. Today the rain came - finally - and I allowed my senses to be drenched with it. The tiny drops sliced holes through the late afternoon sunshine, leaving marks of contempt across a porcelain gray sky. I stood and watched through the screen door. The crisp air tousled my hair and swept the ghost of a memory into my face, making me catch and clutch my breath. I miss you.. It's several hours shy of a week, and already, I miss you. Listen. Rain has a melody, an actual rhythm unlike any other I've heard before. It's comparable to a mingling of antique violins and a fine-tuned mandolin.. My Kathy used to play the mandolin;. I wonder if she hears the melodic rain, too, now from where she is. Indulging the mandolin rain... and missing you, as usual.