Being cold and miserable just doesn’t cut it anymore. Where’s the despair? Where’s the sense of hopelessness that you wish the rain can fill? Where’s the infallible grief and growing anger and prolonged destitution? Or that emptiness that pierce into the skin, filling the bones, replacing the soul? Snap out of it, mister. You’re just caught in the rain. You haven’t seen the end of the world.

That would’ve been a sight.

*****

This morning it rained. Heavily. Normally I would roll over and sleep, tortilla-wrapping myself with the blanket and dreaming of Scarlett Johansen lettuce dressings. But today, by virtue of the dad being away from home, morning chores were doubly mine.

It rained like the heavens upended the northern Atlantic ocean, so that it was heavy, unending and piercingly cold. Just enough to plant the seed of misery.

I went to work so late I probably shouldn’t have gone to work at all. But there was urgent work to be done.

And the rain came and go in drizzles. Dreary clouds just stapled itself to the sky, unmoving and stubborn.

Office Internet killed itself. I had to sit through an hour of troubleshooting before the people at TM unwillingly filed a report, promised a technician and cut my call.

My work crawled at snail’s pace, then morphed and shaped itself into coiling streaks of colours, and danced away to the Limbo.

I had my forehead on the table. I spotted a coin on the floor. Left it there.

The carpet turned to mush and I sank like an anvil in quicksand. Everything was grey.

A man wearing a sombrero hat over his diving suit floated my way. “You too?” he said. “Lots of people here today. Must’ve been the weather.” He paddled away, trailing bubbles that stayed in place.

I decided that it was probably best if I headed for home.

It still managed to rain. It’s raining now, in lapses. All the better.

Because I can now tortilla-wrap myself, and maybe dream of Milla Jovovich lettuce dressings.

Sweet dreams.