These Rainy Mornings

Early morning rain gives me a lovely loneliness. Worms drown on the sidewalk and the tops of buildings appear sultry and smoky. It feels like nobody but me is around to see it. The winds pass down the street in gusts, but they are silent this time of day. There is a quiet inside me too. Last night, I was home alone, heating up my version of risotto, and I thought someone was knocking on my door, so loud was the wind on the porch, some strange person. I grabbed a knife from the rack but when I peered through the curtain, there was nobody to fend off, nobody to stab, just the empty, wet street outside, the wind blowing the tea-trees all ecstatically. In the morning, storms have no voice, they are building, erecting signposts and character and soul, there is mainly quiet. My shifts have been really early these past couple days. I keep needing to get up around six. It's gotten me excited, this weather, and because I'm walking through it at the time of morning when it feels like I'm the only one awake. The sky is glow-in-the-dark cerulean, the coffee is wearing off, it's seven on a Sunday. This sky makes me want to live on a porch in the highlands or in lands high against the aurora borealis, where you've got more sky than earth and more empty than fully, somewhere outside the city. I love this early morning San Francisco rain, this mix of west warmth and winter savage. It's like forty-eight degrees and I feel so tough, in my seven layers and scarf and gloves and doc martins and trenchcoat jean jacket. There's a washing out of exhaust and burrito wrappers and cigarette crumbs, it's harder to get places, harder to stay warm. Not so hard like in Glasgow, where you're frozen and soaking wet, it's romantic, this kind of california weather, so ideal, so soft around the edges. It feels good to walk fast, breathe deep, feel the cool damp settle in your lungs like lust. Rainy mornings outside make indoor time that much sweeter, when you're finally inside and warm and dry and settled. This weather excites me, turns me on. I want sheet-time. I want to wake up early with you, watch the rain from my bed, feel like we're the only ones awake in the world.