Fire Sign

The night is cut through with sharp bolts of jagged lightning in between thunder which slams itself so hard against the house the walls all around us rattle and tremble. Shaking me out of my dead slumber, my eyes dart across the room checking that the windows are closed to keep the driving rain from spilling in all over the hardwood floors.

They are not closed, in fact, nor are the blinds which explains why the bedroom is cool with midnight air and shocked alive by the electric springtime storm. Four a.m. and now suddenly wide awake, I decide it’s as good a time as any to slide out of bed, make coffee and work on some writing as the rain streaks down in heavy sheets along the window pane in my writing room.

Ever since I was a little kid I have romanticized the rain. Not people in the rain, not the rain where lovers kiss as they are drenched to their core, no. Just the rain all by itself, pouring out over lush forests, falling and rushing in streams through cobblestone city streets. Misting through a gray rolling morning fog. There is a quiet inside the rain, an honesty, a melancholy I crave inexplicably.

My grandmother used to tell me that it is because I am a fire sign, Sagittarius. All the fire in my blood needs the rain, the dark, the coolness, on the outside to balance me out. Impossible to say if that is true or not, of course, but it makes for a beautifully poetic interpretation, I think, so I believe it to be the reason.

As the coffee brews and morning light turns to powder blue over the rolling hills of newly budding trees, the rain all but moves off and fades away. Another day, same as the rest, dawns again and again and again in a rhythm I am much more aware of now. The days and nights hand themselves over to us on repeat, repeat, repeat. Like a beckoning. Like a bludgeoning.

Skimming my journal, I see I have scribbled nothing much worth anything, so I stand and pour another cup, sipping in silence as I look out at the waking neighborhood. The thick branches of an old oak tree across the block reach boldly in every direction, wild and untamed, just as they did yesterday, and every day before.

Everything is still as the little lights click on, one by one by one. High above the street, I sit waiting, watching, breathing. Pen to paper. Hour to hour. Fingers to keys. Mostly, though, somewhere deep inside my bones, I’m restless. A static voice skips like a record, I miss the storm.