The Last Rain

I just finished taking a three day writing workshop (whoop whoop!) and learned A TON. This was a prompt that we did today. Choosing out of the proverbial hat, we chose character: a recent high school graduate, setting: the porch of an old farmhouse, time: after a recent thunderstorm, and plot: reminiscing about how things have changed. We also had to include a specific poem (two of my friends in the class wrote it, I did not write the poem). I feel as if this is one of the best pieces I have written so far.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Droplets from the recent storm fall from the eave and splatter on the already soaked edges of the porch. The wind gently whistles, bringing the scent of wet soil, hay and grass to my nose. It’s evening, and although the thunder is now distant and the rain has moved on, the sky is still overcast; promising that we will not see the sun until tomorrow morning.
The air feels cleaner, cooler, refreshed, and newly washed, giving welcome relief to the heat of summer.
I sit in the rocking chair on the porch; my cowboy boots kicked off, faded jeans stretched across my legs, and my blue plaid shirt unbuttoned and blowing in the breeze, exposing my plain white tee shirt underneath.
The huge wooden porch with its warped, dark wooden planks; low, overhanging ceiling; and walls: the bottom half plywood and ripped screen that now flutters in the draft above, hasn’t changed since I was a baby. And I have always thought that the old, beat up red door, that closes off the screened in porch, has looked useless, hanging all raggedy on its hinges.
The plain white rocking chair creaks as I sway back and forth, surveying the landscape. A narrow dirt road meanders away from the house, and practically goes out of sight over the horizon before it twists through a crumbling wall and enters the road. The hay fields surround us by acres. Tall, green, lush and swaying in the almost imperceptible breeze. Beyond our own fields are our neighbor’s fields, and beyond that is the prairie, or that’s how it all used to be anyways. Caddy corner to our old white farmhouse sits the dilapidated old barn, just out of sight from where I sit on the porch. Inside rests old machinery, and old, rotting hay.
I close my eyes as tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
For 18 years, this had been my home. For 12 years I had walked 2 miles down that drive to wait for the bus to pick me up and race the sun over the perimeter of the sky. For 6 years I had helped my father take care of the farm and cut and bale the hay. For 5 years I had watched each of my siblings leave, never to return. For 2 years, every morning, I had coaxed my mother into giving me the keys, so I could drive the truck to school. For 1 year, I had woken up every morning to my grieving mother. For 1 year, I had taken care of 20 acres by myself.

For 8 months I have stopped believing that I will go to college. I still can’t believe that I walked across that stage with a diploma. And for 2 months, I have sat in this empty house, wondering where to go.

High school is over. Homework every night. Feeding the dog. Helping my mother clean the house; is all over. That was the last thunderstorm I will ever see from the porch again.

I think about my 5 siblings, all living their own lives, and my parents now lying peacefully side by side.

I think of my mother: smiling, hair pulled back into a braid, frilly white apron, singing, and telling me that our history is the most important part of us.

I think about my father’s thin, solemn face and how his laugh would boom out and fill the whole yard.

Under my breath I whisper the poem that had hung in our living room under a glass pane, bordered by little blue flowers, encased in a wooden frame for generations:

I see the aqua flow,

Purplish puddles glow.

Shaded periwinkle forms,

Down the everglades they go.

I hear the choir birds booming,

Their singing voices linger,

I stare as I listen to the lead singer.

Telling us their past choices,

I find myself roaming.

Past and future together I am sewing.

I sigh heavily and pull my boots back on. Yanking the keys out of my pocket, I lumber down the steps. 7 of them, concrete, 6 each with of us kids’ hand prints, forever petrified in stone, and the top step with my parents’ hands held pressed together into the concrete, forming a heart. I open the rusty door to the old blue Ford, and swing myself up onto the stained seat.

Tonight I will deposit a check; enough money to pay for myself to go to college. And tomorrow some bigwig at some huge company will come stamp out this imperfection in the middle of their land, plowing down our history to make more room for their corporate crops.

The radio blares, and I refuse to look in the mirror that is mocking me above my head. I refuse to take a last glance at the sad, old house, just sitting there. Waiting. Ready to keep its appointment with the hangman.