Georgia Rain

`The thunder storms are different here in Georgia then they are in Michigan.

In Atlanta the rain comes hot and fast. In Grand Rapids, rain is a day. You could feel it coming—the pregnant air. The feelings of rain could be ridden throughout the day. In the afternoon, I would grow excited because I knew the thunder would still thrum past me while I slept.

Sometimes the storms were terrible. When I was little I would go to my parents room and watch the lightning roll closer in the humid air, pretending I was less scared then I was.

Once, when I was still a watching-out-parent's-window age, I was brave enough to sit on the porch. The storm was wild. Lightning shot between clouds and hummed through my veins. Something shifted in me as I cried on the stoop.

I felt like my life was falling apart, but the lightning crackle was slowly stitching it back together

But here, in Atlanta, I can hardly dwell in the downpour. It simply comes and goes, leaving me wanting. Wanting to feel the thunder creep itself inside me. When I'm sitting on my couch, watching TV before bed and hear the storm start, I get excited that tonight I'll be sleeping with the rain. But it never lasts.

I know the feeling isn't only about rain. It's never only about rain.

I will catch myself thinking a normal thought—will I drink wine tonight or the man staring at the condoms at Costco seems sad or the sky would make a beautiful sheet of origami paper—and think it again.

They catch me off guard because I don't want to forget them.

I've always felt things in big ways, and I've always been introspective. As I've grown up with the title of a writer slung across my back, I've wanted to use those feelings. I've started to see the feelings as threads to be pulled and followed. They always lead somewhere else. Sometimes the other places are a waste, but more often then not, it's bigger than where you started.

I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss Kung Fu. I feel all of this now because I missed rain.

In Michigan, the storm felt like a release of a breath being held for too long, and after it was done the earth could continue breathing. Down here, the rain is like a a short rampage. The air is just as cramped as before it began.

But it's new and it's beautiful and I've learned to love the rain in Georgia.