One million and thirty two years ago tonight after recording the memory of my reflection on the plate glass window, I went into the bathroom alone, undid my zipper and took out so many bobby pins. I was no longer a bride.

I came into the Hyatt bedroom and laid down next to you and we watched Letterman, or maybe it was the Tonight show. That part of the memory has faded. Either way, there was no consummation of the marriage, no hushed voices, no intimate entangling.

In the morning we boarded a flight to Cancun where you practiced with my Canon, telescopically focusing on a blond in a fuschia bikini. I saw the pictures when we came back home and had the film developed.

You never wanted me. And if I’m honest, I guess you were more my grandmother’s pick than mine. Sure, you had deep brown, pretty eyes, but they never saw me.

Tonight, I am filled instead, with the music of my friends, the sound of my own laughter, the recognition of myself in the mirror.

I can remember as a little girl, maybe even a toddler, taking my warm pink “blankie” to the sliding glass door in the family room when it would rain. I’d lie on the floor, my faithful collie dog beside me and watch the raindrops make their way slowly, then fast, then slow again down the glass. Through them I saw how the treetops in the woods behind our changed form as they’d blur and distort and then blur again. This was my childhood. Blurry and distorted. It had to be seen that way.

Sunny kids who love everyone are vulnerable in a house of pain. A house of screaming fits and dishes in the sink, a dog who hasn’t been brushed all year. There probably was another way to live, but no one ever told them, showed them, how.

And so, every day was viewed through the wet glass, clear enough for some light to get through, some color, but lacking detail enough to convince yourself that the glass was happy for its bath of tears.

I still love the rain.

Funny how little things change–I am writing this from under my blanket. I am an old woman now, my bones ache; my skin, poultry. And my once thick hair is brittle and gray. But I am still that little girl, comforted by the rain, the way it blurred the sounds of my neglected sisters, our neglected life. I hear the drops on my roof now, and my faithful farm collie sighs.

I’ll wash the sheets and make the bed
The dog with muddy paws
I’ll wash the sheets and make the bed
The daughter returning from abroad
I’ll wash the sheets and make the bed
Mine and my lover’s tryst
I’ll wash the sheets and make the bed
My parents’ next, last visit
A week from Thursday,
I’ll wash the sheets
when no one else will feel them.
I’ll wash the sheets and make the bed. Cool and crisp against the skin.
And when I’m slow, and pale, and tired, I’ll make the bed
And then I will climb in.