There is a smattering at my window. It looks like greasy film, rain, but oily, just the same. I feel like smashed spaghetti running overboard, sticking to a sinking ship. Why is life like this?

Some days there is talk, things to say, and I am okay. Though I don’t particularly prefer it that way. Some days the neighbours have abandoned their beach house and we can run about. Like free and peace-filled folk thinking we don’t have to dissent with the loudness anymore.  The early morning marching band and gaiety, craziety, grandstand on the next door raised nautical deck, decked out a mile in socialite style, helmed over our withdrawn house. They watch us from its heights above like we are penny folk. I want to be calm and carry on, but over time, I choke.

Someone took the fun away. Then discipline came to stay…until I loved it. To send it away now would be an atrocity. It’s so dearly imbedded in me.

Keep me free from dancing queens and drama scenes and the duo of night and day. Let me play no more amongst the outer torrid door where there is no time for rhyme and reason. Just a smattering of busy bodies keeping bodies busy. Play me somewhere new, where I can keep the Silent tune, sung deep within my berth. No noisy neighbours need come to me, through smoke and mirrored window panes. Just pure rain.

No friends I see, and yet I take my pen and draw you into my life story. You and you and you are glory details from some time and space, lost, when I used to be “the boss” and leader at the playground. So close and yet so long ago. I want you to know I still like you around but now I care only to be found. I have to spend my time deliberating if I’ve made a mistake in being in this or that place because the silence is hiding somewhere and I want to find it there, most of all.

A smattering of rain hits my head and there we stand together. Drenched and wrenched out of this dream. Squeaky clean. The deep fills me with reverence and I dare share it with my noisy neighbours.