Soft Rains
Today is exploration day.
I am happy because today is my birthday:
I am five whole years old!
Today we get to play in the snow,
and the homes of Mommy and Daddy’s Mommies and Daddies.
Or as Daddy likes to call them, “remanents of sivilyzashin”.
I don’t know what a sivilyzashin is.
Daddy says I wouldn’t understand.
But I just like to call them homes.
We open the doors by pressing the big red button.
Daddy always lets me press it.
My brother always asks why can’t we live above ground.
He's silly and a year younger than me.
He doesn't realize it's too cold.
Anyways, the door opens and we climb up to outside.
I once didn't know what "outside" meant.
I know now.
It means "not in a home".
As Daddy fills up the "kar" with the smelly yellow water,
Mommy and I stand by our home's sign:
"NO TRESPASSING".
I don't know what TRESPASSING means.
Mommy tells me it means going to a place you're not supposed to.
I don't know any place where I could be TRESPASSING.
I guess that's why it says there's NO TRESPASSING.
Daddy starts the kar.
We go very fast.
Eventually we reach "Austin".
Austin is this place where there are these massive homes.
Mommy and Daddy call them "sky scrapers",
which makes sense since they scrape the sky.
It's very warm.
Daddy's device says it's 244K outside,
whatever that means.
Me and my brother go to a funny bowl shaped home to play hide and seek.
Mommy and Daddy go to get food.
We play for a while.
I trip on a “skelutin”,
as Daddy calls them.
Most of them wear nice clothes,
but the clothes are way too thin to stop the cold.
I once asked where they came from.
Mommy started crying.
My little brother is seeker this time.
I decide to go up to a room of the home I’ve never been in.
A skelutin in very nice clothing is sitting in a chair there.
There is a paper there.
I can read it,
but I don’t understand most of the words.
It says his name is Harvey Smithson.
It also says it’s Awill.
I wonder how a paper can have two names.
Two words sound funny:
“Soft Rains”
I don’t know what ‘Rains’ is,
but I think it has to do with water.
I save it with Pol-roid anyway.
Pol-roid is a cool box I found a while back.
It saves stuff you can see.
It’s name is on it:
Pol#roid.
The letter that was there was worn away when I found it.
I look over to the nice skelutin.
I see a hole on each side of its head.
I wonder what made the hole.
My brother finds me.
He says “you’re it!”.
I say we should go back to the kar.
He agrees.
I close the door,
Whose name is Governor Smithson.
I know that because it says so.
Anyways,
we walk back to the kar.
Mommy is there.
Mommy says we should go home.
I show Mommy Harvey Smithson.
Mommy reads Harvey Smithson.
Mommy shows Daddy.
Daddy asks where I found it.
I say the funny bowl home.
Daddy cries a tear and smiles at the same time.
I’ve never seen that before.
I watch the tear and whisper:
“Soft rains.”