The Tea Notes: When Skies Are Gray (Unformated)

The A.A meeting next door looked especially festive this evening. The church welcomed every abuser in the area for a night of small talk and guidence at the hands of yester-users named Frank and Jack. They park their Kias, sip their iced coffees and lit one more smoke before the service begins. As I watched outside the window I couldn't help but feel like I've never been more welcome in a place of God.I had one beer and smoked a little grass, knowing perfectly well I had to drive. I managed to maintain a certain enlightened level of insobriety and for a while, I actually wore a smile. That all went out the window with a song. I won't bring up the name or the artist, it's meaningless anyway. What does matter is what it did to me. That song, so normally beautiful, provoked a complete numbness of my glee. With eyes wide opened, I dreamt of city streets, hot tubs, clothes lines, seconds before secure slumbers, Her. But that needs to end. I've concluded that chapter in my life, though much later then she. I just can't figure out how to move on. It's like your first cloudy day. How do you react when the sunshine is gone? She was my sunshine; my only sunshine.I left just as the meeting was gettng out and was approached by an older gentlemen. He commented on how he liked my guitar and smiled and seemed generally pleased with how his life was going. I smiled through it too, this time forcing my lips to curl. I couldn't even listen to what he was saying nor did I care. He got to go home to nice weather.

The Rain (Unformated)

The rain before the first day of summer has an aroma unlike any jarred, bottled or jellied fragrence I have ever taken in. It's the smell of smoking pine logs, ghost town concrete, fresh sheets being shared early on in an evening. I took a mere break from the weezing of my out of date air conditioner to step outside and destroy my lungs and there it was; Waltzing gently through the neighborhood on a cape cod breeze. The porch was splattered with the translucent tears of Mother Earth, turning each two by four into a bland Pollock rip off. I trust that I was the only one who found it so beautiful. I leaned against it's rotten railing and closed my eyes as I took a deep breath through my nose. The air rolled down the back of my throat and I could taste the season, so rich and filling. It was then that my loneliness had finally caught up with me.I snubbed out my cigarette and headed in, knowng I would go right back to lying in my bed of bad memories; And I did. Summer nights of long ago replayed in my mind of when she would curl up in my arms under my drug rug, seeking warmth from the industrial strength A.C. One night in particular, she closed her eyes and clumsily spoke "I'm so comfortable in your arms". As my brain brought forth this moment I assumed I had repressed, my eyes swelled and the tears started to fall. I was suddenly paralized, unable to move neither my limbs nor my eyes as I sobbed hystericlly."Jesus Christ" I thought. "Pull it together."But it was useless. Her diamond ring fingers were still wrapped around my heart. My first instinct was to reach for the bottle and push those tears back with a firery slug of Dominican rum but I stopped myself. Tonight, there would be no use of artifical harmony to ease my natural emotion. Instead, I would simply sit, think and cry as my shakey and breathless voice would ask walls, "Why did she leave me?". What a pitiful sight; A grown man, weeping and pleading with an unresponsive memory. This is what my own, foolish heart has done to me. I doubt I will ever be in love again.So here I sit now, with moist cheekbones and terrible sight, still broken hearted, snug under my blankets, wishing some girl was here, drinking my rocks glass of rum.....forever being romantic.