Wordsmith

Through blustering winds that whip the rain into a sideways-falling frenzy, March makes herself known. The bus driver eyes me and says apologetically, "Where do you need to get to, again?"

I grin without taking my eyes off the storm spattering against his windshield. "'round Main Street."

He winces. "That's about a mile back that way." This is the closest stop.

"My own fault," I shrug. "Wasn't paying attention." There are several buses that make the rounds from the school to my town. When this one came along, I had been intent upon the conversation I'd been having with the Insomniac and had simply followed him onto it without asking any questions. It had been later that the bus driver had worked out that the stop I needed was not a stop he...well, stopped at.

"You want a transfer?" the bus driver asks.
"Nah, man, I'm just going to walk it."
"You're going to get wet," he points out, lest I had been unaware of the fact. He is being Helpful.
"There are worse things to be."
He takes a moment to muse on this. "Well. I suppose so," he allows, and I can't help but laugh.  "Clothes dry, my friend," I inform him, and with a have-a-good-night I descend into the dark and stormy night. The bus rumbles away, and for a second I imagine it guilty.

Compared to January's frequent snowdumps and the bonenumbing freeze that was February, it's warm out, and the rain is melting what little is left of the filthy snow and washing the streets into a wet, clean shine.

I'm drenched within minutes, and the wind whips my hair into a tangle of dripping strands. I gaze up at the sky and get a faceful of rain. Some of it worms into my collar and streams cold down my back. Wet denim plasters itself to my legs. Squish-slap, squish-slap say my shoes to the pavement. It isn't anyone's definition of comfortable, but the clouds boil overhead and the wind is a wilderness and there's a smell in the air that whispers of spring and I can't help myself, I thrust my arms out and into it and howl joy to the sky.


I can't do it. I can't not dance. I can't suppress it, it's not the sort of thing that allows itself to be suppressed, it has to be let out or something in me will break trying to hold it back.

I can't keep the grin off my face.


They called me wordsmith.