Lullaby

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
(April Rain Song, Langston Hughes)

It is not an April rain. I'm not sure it's even an August rain. I know it's a big one, though, with lightning and thunder heavier than houses, shaking my own and igniting the dark room where I write. When I glance down I can see my fingers, stark and impossibly white, illuminated in bright staccato bursts above the keyboard. Duncan and Winnie are hovering next to me, one wrapped around my feet, the other huddled up in a tight little ball just to the side of the screen.

We did not walk long tonight. The temperature dropped nearly twenty degrees in the few shorts minutes it took me to change my clothes. It continued to plummet, and a frosty wind picked up while we made our rounds through the park, now overrun with the kiddie soccer leagues and their parents, who pretend to watch from the sidelines but are mostly engaged in gossip with other parents or people over the phone. The first drops, icy and small, started as we rounded the baseball diamonds and picked up in speed and volume as we crossed the fields, which were quickly emptying out. Long lines of SUVs and minivans angled for the exits out of the parking-lots, windshield wipers humming and sweeping rapidly back and forth. By the time we crossed Bowles the rain was driving us down, stinging and cold, as though our entire bodies had fallen asleep like a leg or an arm slept on at the wrong angle. We could not get home fast enough.

I am cold and tired, deserving of quiet and sleep, and the sound of the rain on the windows and in the street outside is its own music. I think I'll turn off the telephone, turn off the lights even, maybe light a few candles and sit in the dark until my eyes grow heavy and Duncan's chin on my ankle no longer shifts with the sound of the thunder but settles in and grows warm against my skin.