Lluvia

I sit here in a house that has almost become a home to me...just in the past few weeks have I crept out of my room and ventured down into the rest of the casa. Inch by inch, it's opened up to me. I remember when I first came here and was afraid to bring my laptop down into the kitchen to work, and when I felt I needed a reason to visit any part of the house other than my bedroom. Now here I sit, the last one at the kitchen table, reveling in the solitude, in the dutiful ticking of the clock that Jodi left as a gift to us, in the patient dripping of the rain spent on the patio, in my belly full of chapata and lindor balls and cafe soluble. This country is in me now...in my belly, in my skin, in my mind, and my soul. This family is in my heart. Almost my family. Almost my house. Almost my trampoline. Almost my kitchen table and my pan dulce and my green plastic water glass and my yellow porcelain mug that I suspect was "borrowed" from Cemanahuac. Almost my Lucky and my Daisy. Almost my sisters, almost my mother. No, perhaps not just almost.