Yesterday I Saw the Rain

        Yesterday I saw the rain.  It came down in fierce jolts, like a racecar driver’s car flipping into the air.  And there I was, in the middle of it. 

A man’s face on the pavement, blood and people slithering away like bugs under the rug of the city.

A Moment In A Blue World

        Falling in the winds, the Trades; the bicycle landing on the bowsprit, spinning off the slick wood—swirling like a mad top into the sea—I see your hands fly up like butterflies and you look so sad.  I want to hold you and tell you “It will be all right”…but that seems somehow futile, it being gone, now there is no more card playing.

The Quiet Death Of An Uneasy Citizen

        Today is my 27th birthday.  I am still on my bed, looking out the window to Magnolia, watching the water drip from the porch above.  My head is silent and yet somewhere there is a swirling of thoughts I cannot locate.

        The kitchen is clean today; I can make breakfast.  I am not good at all at making breakfast, but I can make coffee.  The cell phone rings, Fuga, a pretend organ that penetrates my skull, releasing my thoughts into my eyes, stinging them with regret.  (Why am I awake?)

        “Hello?”  I ask into the small plastic receiver, my voice hollow and raspy.

        “May I come up?” says the voice on the other line.

        “Who…what?  Who is this?”

        “I am your Death, I come to show you to yourself.”

        “You have to be invited?”

        “Yes.”

        “That’s odd.  What if I don’t want you to come?”

        “That is your choice, but it will be one you will come to mourn…in time…but not the time you think you know…the time of your death.”

        “Is this a prank?” I ask, starting the coffee maker (Did I grind the coffee?  Where is my thought?).

        “I assure you, I am waiting.”

        “Waiting for what?”

        “For you.”

        “Downstairs?”

        “So to speak.”

        “I don’t have my phone hooked up to the door release, I’d have to come down.”

        “…Okay.”

        “I’m not dressed.”

        “You’re naked?”

        “Yes, so?”

        “Are you excited?”

        “No, quite quiet.  I can’t seem to locate my thoughts…they seem to be drifting away from me.”

        “May I come up?”

        “Yes, fine.  Give a few minutes to dress.”

        “Put on the robe and come down.”

        “Demanding are we much?  Hold your horses.”

        I push END on the phone and pour a cup of coffee (That was fast).  My robe?  I don’t think that is clean, the robe my husband bought me on our first Christmas together.  All white; so pure, now stained.  I must find it though.

        After a minute of looking (It is right there), I put it on.  My husband would be shocked if he knew I was answering the door to Death, especially my Death, on my birthday.  (Oh well, I’m sure he’s seen you naked.)

        Slippers and robe on, I pull myself down the stairs, a steaming cup of coffee in hand, the cup reading:  “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”.

        Death is shivering in the drizzling rain and I let him in.  He nods hello and I smirk at him, “Come in then, Jeez.”

        Back in the apartment, he undresses me and appraises me.

        “Today is what?  Twenty-seven?” he asks, surveying my stripped body, penetrating my brain, pulling out my thoughts.

        “Yes.  I was alone for so long, and then I met my husband.”

        “He is good to you.  I’m sorry.”

        “Will he be all right?” I ask, suddenly afraid for his future without me.

        “Eventually.”

        “What does that mean?”

        Death looks at me sideways.  “Don’t think on it.  It is not your fault.”

        “Is there fault?” I ask, trying to pull my thought back in.  “Why is there so much pain when I’m barley alive?  I had so much more life to live?”

        “Mmm.  Not in your cards, really,” he answers sitting on the sofa, leaving me to stand there exposed in the center of the room, holding my “dreams”. 

“You must let go of all this,” he waves away the room and we are inside a cavern, dark and cold.  My eyes shrink into a narrow tunnel of light, and there is music, sweet and pulsing.

        “Am I dead?”

        He answers, his voice as if far away, “You are…a dream…”

Dustin Engstrom was raised in the small town of Crosslake, MN. He holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota, Morris where also studied writing. He lives in Seattle with his partner Robert and works in administration at a mainstage theatre.

Email: Dustin Engstrom

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