Follow the Lighted Promenade

(This was actually written last night. Writing stops the bleeding.) I'm on the road. Firelight dances across the page as I write. From my room I cast my mind's eye out. Somewhere rain falls and runs in rivulets down speckled, green mountainsides. Somewhere striking, bulbous thunderclouds float out over breakers, kissed by the sun. Somewhere there is happiness. I know it's there. It's been brushing by me like a stranger in the crowd. Somewhere it is warm. Somewhere people are at ease. I sit in my room, watching the candle dance on the wall. I can't shake off the cold, or the rust and steel feeling that Chicago always gives me. It's been an endless stream of Sundays, days and days in a row. I know there's more! The sun is on the other end - the winning end - and I am down on the cloudy bend. It's early summer in Madagascar, the Island of Rainbows. Here it is perpetually November. I don't feel alone right now. I haven'