Bad Clouds

I’m an air sign.

A libra.

I don’t really even know what any of that means,

that's just how it is.

It’s rainin’ tonight in the A.

A rainy Monday in June.

I feel strangely connected to the rain.

Maybe that’s cause she’s born of air.

Or maybe it’s cause Mars is red or the Peachtree I live on is West or any number of the unknowable things the tarot cards throw—snakes and rocks and fools—

some unseen movement beneath the ripples on the surface of the pond.

M says, I’m sort of more of a “depressed soul.”

I thought maybe that was true for a bit.

But now I don’t.

Maybe some of us are more in touch with the things that lie beneath the rings the sinking stone causes.

This all struck me while I was driving home with my groceries.

I was alone, but not lonely.

Just me and the rain, and the wet of the moving late-night traffic.

We run from her—

the rain.

Maybe that’s why I feel connected to her.

She’s alone too.

Making her way across the world.

Stickin’ to her work.

If you’d asked me my future all those years ago,

before the boy,

before coming out,

before this life I’m lucky to lead—yes, “lucky,” in spite of it all—

I wouldn’t have seen any of it.

I wouldn’t have seen myself rollin’ on like a thunderhead across the skyline.

Flashin’

and rumblin’,

and movin’ on.

I guess that’s the thing—

things change.

And the world, she moves right on.

Whether you’re broken or brave, or in love or not—

whether you’re caught in the rain or dry at home.

“It come a bad cloud,” that’s what they say down here.

Maybe so—

That’s prolly what I’d’ve said about the aftermath of my changed world—

“It came a bad cloud.”

But that’s not how I feel about it anymore.

I just feel like it rained one night.

 It rained for a helluva long time.

And then it stopped.

And I’m sure it’ll fall on me again sometime,

kinda like tonight.