Room for rent....

It's raining. Not drops or drizzles or showers. Just silvery mist left over from the night before, still falling, drifting from the sky like weightless summer snowflakes. I raise my cup of coffee and we clink! to each other, hot steamy morning cocktails on the porch. My friend and I.

For the longest time, we don't say a word. Watch the children across the street tumble out the front door, on rollerblades, two wheeled spider bikes, and bellies-to-the-pavement on makeshift skateboards. Christmas morning all over again....in their world.

We light cigarettes in sync, exhale into the mist. "Isn't if funny how we all met, came together......" she says. "Yeah.... it's weird" "And how much everything has changed" "And stayed the same" "We've watched a parade from this porch, down your drive-way, in and out of these screen doors" "Yeah....." "Its' been a good one", she said, snubbing out her 501. "I miss him"....an after thought in the rain. "Me, too."

I snub out my own cigarette, nod at the weeping sky outside the dusty screen...
"It's the butterfly"....
I know,I know, I know..... the endless butterfly effect"
"No, there she is.....dancing in the rain"
We watched her for the longest time, flitting from wet Iris blooms to the cool wet earth, and up into the palm fronds, doing adagio by herself in the morning sky.....

"I'm going home to my new husband now" she whispered, creeking the screen door open...walking barefoot out into the dampened sky....

I watched her, each step she took folding the wet grass into momentary footprints, ones that would rise and disappear when the sun came out again.

And I thought for the longest time about him. How blessed I was she married him, loved him, and how lucky I was. To have had him as my friend. And for a moment, I saw him. Standing there, leaning against the truck, smoking.... smiling, legs crossed, blue eyes cast into the rain....reminding me...

to believe....