Friday Rain

Is it me?

Or are my children drifting farther away

While the woman I love has gone far away

And it's raining a rain that even I can't enjoy

On this blank day in December

Is it me?

Is it me?

Or am I back to this rusty familiar

That hides just behind my right shoulder

In whispered cotton thoughts steeped in mud

Ever since I can remember

Is it me?

Is it me?

Or am I nowhere

Everywhere

Here and there

Still unsure of which direction I should send my next breath

Solid in the abstraction of the unknown moment

When I can pretend to be as the others are

When I can sit without the isolation of my singular thoughts that search for knowing ears

When I can be in the mirror of it all and still know that I matter

When the joy and swooping voices of strangers remind me of love

And not fear

Is it me?

I had hoped that one day the day would come

When the birds would join me and affirm my flight

When the sky would wink at me before growing dark

When the ones I loved would come home for dinner

When the ball and chain that stayed on my left heel would roll pass me by

Without looking back but leaving the words "see ya" lingering in the air in its wake

Leaving me to breathe in this free air which until now had danced around me like quicksilver 

Like marshy fog

Like jesus and santa claus hidden in one gift-wrapped present

Only to find an empty box at the end of Christmas Day

I had hoped for this kind of romance and magic and rain and reflection

I had hoped for solid

For clear

For you

But more questions than answers invade this barren afternoon

And the rain feels old and dusty

And I wish I had better news for my ancestors 

My father

My grandmother

And all the rest

Yet all I have to offer up is the question

Shrouded in guilt

Lonely in its final strides to some kind of sunset 

Behind some kind of clouds

Bringing some kind of rain

The question

Again

Is

Is it me?

Is it me?

Is it...