The phone rang through the house, an old sound that was anything but comforting. Turning down my music, I answered the call to my mother’s frantic warnings about the approaching weather: storms, hail, tornadoes, thunder, lightening, aliens, who knows.
“And I need you to open the back door so that if hail hits, you’ll be able to hear the sirens above it,” she said.
“All right, Mama. Drive safe,” I replied dully as I opened the door. Stepping out onto the covered deck, I inhaled deeply and almost fell over at the intensity of the beauty of the smell of the spring rain. So sweet, so soft, I wanted to be suffocated by the air. I wandered over to the railing, allowing the rain to splash back at my face. Setting the phone on the table behind me, I pulled my jeans off, followed by my shirt and under garments, and leapt into the rain, off of the deck into the dark night.
I swam through the wind and the rain and into the stars and slept on a cloud that night. And suddenly, all eyes were on me and my extreme freedom. Everyone wanted to be me. Everyone wanted to fly naked through the heavy rain and wild tornadoes without a fear, but they knew that I was the only one who was brave enough to take that leap. Because they knew that they would never take the leap, they hated me for being brave enough. The people wanted to catch me and hurt me; lock me up and never allow anyone to love me. So I flew higher and higher into the night, dodging ice and electricity with the same fear that I dodged the nets of my old friends. I flew so high that suddenly, I was not part of my world anymore, but rather in a new one.
I descended onto purple plains and rested in a field of berries and wild flowers while the sun came up on this new place. When I awoke, I drew my knees to my chest and cried for the people who hated me. I cried for the places I would never be again and the loves I would never touch again and the voices I would never hear again. When I opened my eyes again, flower petals were falling from the sky onto my pale and freckled shoulders and turning into rainbows on my skin, enveloping me in their warmth and smiles. I stood up and smiled at the sun, embracing her love, before I ran as fast as I could through the field. This field stretched as far as I could see, changing colors with every step as though it was a young girl blushing for the first time. The clouds above my head, dropping my rainbow-petals, were following me, racing me, and laughing with me as I played.
I ate berries and flower petals and drank rainbows for days and days, playing with the clouds when I was energetic and whispering to the trees when I wanted to be quiet and singing with the song birds when I was lonely. I was happier than I thought possible in my secret world away from my old life. I was so happy, in fact, that I had almost forgotten who I was before that rainstorm back home. One day, though, the night sky lit up with pink lightening, scaring and bleeding out the sky of its virginity. My rainbows fell to the ground and hid beneath the withering leaves of my berries and trees. Angry rocks of fire dove from my skies onto my field, causing it to scream in pain and weep the black and white spectrums into a deep black and white puddle. I cried out, begging the storm to stop hurting my lovely home, but to no avail. Unable to take it, I collapsed to the shaking ground, covering my head with my arms and wept and wept as my world broke to colorless pieces below my knees. I cried for what felt like days and days, hoping the storm would cease, though it never did, and I cried myself into an exhausted unconscious.
I never really woke up from that fit of failure. My world was scarred and destroyed and my rainbows never had color anymore. My berries never regrew and my songbirds grew silent under my screaming. The clouds lost their laughter and my trees turned a deaf ear to my whispers.
I miss my old world. The one where I didn’t have to be alone to be happy. The one where people loved me for me, not hated me for who I seemed to be. Why won’t they come and find me? Pull me out of my dead world and back into their arms? Come get me, love.