Sun shines

and I bolt from the house

like a bird-freed from its cage

capering through my garden.

My thoughts beg the flowers to bud

the leaves to unfurl

the world to open up

blue sky and blinding day.

In light I remember what it was to be a child

bare foot in the grass

golden patterns filtering through branches

casting bright shadows across the lawn.

In blinding hues

I am the girl I was,

the woman I wanted to be

laced into a tight sundress and sandals

with red lacquered toes

too bright to be proper,

too free to care.

With sun comes heat.

Under its pressing warmth

I grow slow and lazy

flopping from lounge to chair

porch to sitting room

a glass

iced cold

pressed against my temple,

the phone or a friend

resting ever at my side.

Light makes me civil,

makes me social,

makes me the chatty companion I never am

when the rains come

and they come as surly as sun-set and death.

Rain comes on fierce wings

blown off tumultuous oceans

to fall with force from fat lazy clouds

or sting my face with fog

too heavy to maintain its ephemeral form.

With the rain comes the other self,

the turtle self;

a shell wearing, head hiding, self-cramming house dweller

too afraid to venture into the cold and clammy world beyond.

What is there to celebrate

when darkness creeps on moistened toes

to drench and smother all small joys?

I die in the rain

wilt and recede in its constant drizzle

my soul braking, shattering, glittering on the pavement

splashed across the surface

like the drops which wound me.

My soul free falls into the depths of black ridged winter

then vainly does my heart cling to artificial light

powerless to replace that blinding golden glow of summer?

The rain has taught me patience,

the value of old sunlit memories,

the necessity of an ever expansive inner world.

From long spells of impenetrable darkness

I know that no matter where I am or what I am reduced to

there is a place inside my mind

for a girl in a sundress

luminous under a full and fearless sun,

a girl who refuses to dream in monochromatic–rain dampened hues.

By EE Orme on surviving Seattle, the place where sometimes it rains longer than 9 months of the year.