For almost 10 minutes, while I contemplated the sensation of my last cloves in my chest, I listened to the tap-tap of rain on my sycamore. His leaves changed suddenly this year. For two weeks he has rained brown, crunchy leaves. Some cling to nearly naked branches. My camera longs to document this fall, but it’s bittersweet. It’s the last one, as I have stated before, and I think that Seemore knows it. So, I listened to the rain, and watched more shiny, heavy leaves fall to the shallow puddles in my yard. Other fallen leaves cupped the rain. Ripples in the tiny pools of water rushed outwards, over and over, each meeting the other or rushing into a neighboring pool. I listened and remembered other rains, porches, cigarettles I shouldn’t be smoking.

The first time I rolled, it rained. For many hours, a man I just met and I sat on the porch in his apartment, swapping stories and passing a well-rolled joint. He kept bringing me cold orange juice, and made sure that I was okay, both chemically and physically. I don’t really remember what we talked about, but I remember the rain. It glowed like a neon orange curtain in the streetlight beneath the man’s porch. He lived on the fifth floor. The ashtray was full when we went to sleep, curled around each other like snakes. I didn’t want to stay awake until dawn. Dawn made me feel dirty, so we popped a sleeping pill and retreated to his room. I fell asleep on a mattress on his floor, the sound of rain ringing in my ears.

When I first moved to Miami in 1994, I lived briefly with my uncle. Promised help with school and a car, I ran from North Carolina like the devil chased me and my sticky, burning sins. Two windows crowned my new bed, like a glowing headboard. I didn’t care much for the morning hours, when the sun warmed my blankets too much, and I woke with sweat sliding down my nose, suddenly cooled by the arctic air-conditioning. For those months, I could never get comfortable in that bed, unless it rained. The gray, every changing, partially illuminated by the piercing Florida sun, then dark as soot, raced past my window. When it rained, it raced down the roof in a solid sheet. I could see the shrubbery that lined the neighbor’s fence danced and thrashed in the storms. Sometimes, I crouched in the window and let my eyes take in full effects of the storms, and closer to the panes of streaked glass, I could hear the fat drops that smacked into plants and the footpath just next to the house. Or, when I felt lazy or alone, I would laid on my back at an angle where only the sky was visible, and although I could hear the rain on the plants, all I could see was the swirling gray.

I will remember, forever, the sound of the rain on my porch at Nebraska Street, and the strange echo of storms in our apartment at Bumby, and the flat patter of the swift, fat drops upon our roof at Delaney Park. I will remember it all, and perhaps, I will write more about those places that I’ve not talked about - the three houses in Ft. Lauderdale, or the big house in Miami, or the garage in South Miami, or the hovel in Hollywood. I remember the storms, the violence and the peace, when I lived in all of those places, but that’s a story for another time.