Overnight.
Parked in the woods, at my hilltop stop. As the car door closes and locks, the rain begins.
I am inside alone in the wet until until dawn, listening to drops tapping their dances atop my car. Cozy sleeping but cramped. Little air but enough. I can manage.
My facilities are reduced. I have an empty jar, if I need it, and I will. No reason to go out, to stand in the rain. Better to stay dry, inside, to bleed pressure from my bladder. As long as I don't spill.
"If you live long enough, everything is possible," they say, so one day I will urinate my car. "But not tonight," I hope.
The moon is with me, above, but it hides. I know it is watching behind its curtain of clouds. We are separate tonight, cannot see each other. The moon has been keeping me company for days now. Nights. For nights. We will get past this and resume our conversation directly, but not this night.
The moon itself is always dry, you know, but cold — the eternal tradeoff. Wet or cold, pick your pain. The moon is dry but I am wet. We both suffer then, in our separate ways, and talk later.
In the morning after showering with the other homeless men I visit a laundry to let a dryer have at my towel. It will never come dry otherwise, today, not inside the car inside the rain all day. I have money, and it is well spent. The towel revives.
Then, surprised, hours later, the following evening, last night, parked again at the same spot, there is no rain, not all night, and I see stars while outside, not needing my jar, or chancing a spill. I see stars, and tonight was due the deluge. Later, I guess. It will still come, I think. It will. The year is still too young to be dry, and the storms still range free.
Very well. I have to accept all outcomes because there is no choice among them. At least I have seen stars again. They are still doing fine, and the hazed moon was only slightly hazed. Beyond the clouds, but only slightly out of reach.
This is good. Good enough, I guess.