Rain girl

She seemed to walk between the raindrops.  Those same drops that assaulted my skin.   I stood there in awe as she spun sending her coat tails flaring.  She was free.  I thought of all the times I had used that word when in fact I was describing something burdened.  This was the correct ‘free’, unleashed, even.  I watched her and made a conscious effort to remember each lucid movement.  It was as if everything had slowed down, just a bit, even the rain.  I could no longer feel the abusive water on my neck.  I wished for a camera, that a picture would capture this, these, moments better than my feeble words.  Pictures can capture feelings.  My thesaurus gives me ‘free’.  Perhaps it was that simple.  She there with her face turned to the heavens, singing ‘rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens’.  I could still feel the burden of eyes.  We made our way down the street, me behind her.  People in windows had the same awkward reaction as I.  They smile, chuckle a bit, and point out their amusement to a friend, while deep inside they long for that willingness to shed these rules that will forever hold us back.  I have played that game.  I play this game everyday in my head.  I dread who I will encounter each day, because I despise the player I become around them.  But she… She is who I wish to be, to achieve that careless wisp.  That smile that appears from nowhere.  I’ve had it.  I was so stunned I tried to hold it back.  But it is irrepressible.  Maybe some day it will swell up inside me and burst on an evening such as this.  The smile will capture my lips forever and I will sing show tunes and not give a damn what anyone else thinks. But today, rather tonight, I will walk steadily behind, a witness to her radiance.
Summer 1999
(I wrote it after hearing that song “beautiful” by Joydrop)