(Please excuse any grammatical errors. All short stories by Solovino Reyes are in development and will be edited throughout the year.)

Based on a poem written last year.

Solovino Reyes was alone again; holding a slight grudge against life he walked through the porthole-esque streets of downtown Los Angeles where the drudgery stained gray walls and the black asphalt suffered to create some kind of stimuli for his mind. But like a wet book of matches, damp and flaccid, he experienced no sparks, no kindle, no nada; only a relentless sinking feeling coaxing him further down the dim obscurity of the night.

Earlier in the evening, the bustle of the bar scene failed to kick start the good side of his duality and at 4a.m., around here you won’t find the good side of anything. In a drunken progression he passes by all the closed restaurants and businesses. No one is around. There are no ridiculous art-walk crowds to distract him from himself. No lady to steal a kiss from. At his age he shouldn’t be trying to steal kisses anyway. So he flips the mental middle finger at his current reality with a shrug of the shoulders and a voice in his head says, “Fuck it all. Who cares.”

What a time to start to thinking about age and existence. He thinks to himself, Why am I here?

Then laughs at his own cliché’. Not only is he feeling like shit, he can’t even come up with a good conversation in his own head to deal with it.

What a time to start to question life’s worth?

Wondering why he should even attempt to take inventory of accomplishments at this time, all he could remember is the bad shit; the negativity that swirls in his system attaching itself to blood cells and coagulating in his ventricle chambers, suffocating his heart. He feels his chest.

Why am I thinking of this now? He wonders. Why now?

All this is is a good moment to thank the heavens that he is by no means suicidal.

He looks up to see a starless black sky as he turns the corner to his car. A crisp winter breeze strikes his face and he realizes he’s still too drunk to drive. He wrestles his keys into the tiny slit on the door and once in his car Solovino sits motionless, staring through the windshield of his compact two door vehicle.

How many times have I done this?How many times have I sat in my car for an hour before turning the ignition to get my ass moving?

Frozen in his seat, a heavy rain begins to fall. It came down hard and all he could see now is the rain hit the glass. He challenged himself to count the drops. Pit, pat, ratataat tat tat ta tat ta tat tat, splat after splat.

In minutes, he imagined, his count must be in the millions so he took a moment to pat himself on the back because he’s never counted this high before; imaginary or not. So he kept counting and became entranced. He could now see himself following the rain all over his car, off the sides and onto the ground, traveling through the storm drains, making its way to the ocean through giant concrete tunnel waterways.

His thoughts take him to the Pacific, dragging with him all of downtown’s sicknesses..…and..….he floats. He sways with the tide….in….and….out. Over….and…over.

Floating, he wondered How long does it take for that water to see the sun again. Then How long will it take the sun to heat the water and evaporate it into something pure; immaculate enough to form a cloud; magical and powerful; strong enough to release another rain somewhere on another land that he will never step foot on. How many cycles will it take before that same rain comes back and wraps around his car again. How many cycles has the sun witnessed.

He sat there wondering for a couple of hours until the sky cleared up. Then the sun peaked from behind the gray and warmed his face. He squinted and turned the key and heard his engine start. No more than fifteen minutes after that he made it home….again; again.