rain, rain, go away...
The following few minutes sums up my day: my 3 hour night class lets out, I walk outside and it's pouring rain. I have no umbrella, of course. I pull up the hood of my thin sweatshirt, step out into the cold rain -- wincing -- and walk. I'm nearly to the High Street bus stop, my clothes mottled with rain, when I see the #2 approaching my stop, its thick dirty wheels trudging through the gutter on the opposite side of the street. I have to make that bus, I think. I start running, rainwater squishing out of my water-logged sneakers. I run like hell, even though I know there's no way I'll make the bus. And I don't. The bus slinks past my stop before I can even cross High Street. I stand at the bus stop, under the flimsy awning of a smoke shop. My heart flails about like a fish within my wet chest.
I want to cry, because it's been a terrible day. It's been a terrible day and now I'm standing in the rain because I just missed my bus and I don't have an umbrella. I don't have an umbrella, and I don't have any idea how I'm going to do all the work that's required of me this quarter. Just thinking about it makes my stomach clamp up, seized with emotional clothes pins. Nobody on the street can tell I'm crying because it's raining, and because they're all ducked under their stupidly cheerful umbrellas, their minds thick with the focus needed to dodge puddles. And I am wet, and crying, and they don't even see me but that's okay. I am thinking about my I-pod and my cell phone, sulking in the swamp at the bottom of my bag. I am thinking about the books I still need to buy with the money I still don't have. I am thinking that it's January and it's not supposed to be raining but here I am, in the thick of it, wanting to laugh at the irony.