Answer:
I brooklyn rain
The rain here is different than the way
it rains in Greenville. No sweet smell of honeysuckle. No soft squish of pine. No slip and slide through grass. Just Mama saying, Stay inside today. It‘s raining,
5 and me at the window. Nothing to do but watch
the gray sidewalk grow darker, watch
the drops slide down the glass pane,
10 watch
people below me move fast, heads bent.
Already there are stories
in my head. Already color and sound and words.
SCAN FOR MULTIMEDIA
NOTES
squish (skwihsh) n. spongy, cushioned feeling when walking on a flexible surface
from Brown Girl Dreaming 13
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NOTES
humming (HUHM ihng) v. singing with closed lips and without words
15
20
25
Already I’m
drawing circles on the glass, humming myself someplace far away from here.
Down south, there was always someplace else to go you could step out into the rain and
Grandma would let you
lift your head and stick out your tongue
be happy.
Down south already feels like a long time ago
but the stories in my head
take me back there, set me down in Daddy’s garden where the sun is always shining.
* * *
another way
While our friends are watching TV or playing outside, we are in our house, knowing that begging our mother to turn the television on is useless, begging her for
ten minutes outside will only mean her saying,
No. Saying,
You can run wild with your friends anytime. Today I want you to find another way to play.
And then one day my mother
comes home with two shopping bags
filled with board games—Monopoly, checkers, chess, Ants in the Pants, Sorry, Trouble,
just about every game we’ve ever seen
in the commercials between
our Saturday morning cartoons.
So many games, we don’t know
where to begin playing, so we let Roman choose. And he chooses Trouble
because he likes the sound the die makes
when it pops inside
its plastic bubble. And for days and days,
it is Christmas in November,
games to play when our homework is done, Monopoly money to count
and checkers to slam down on boards, ants to flip into blue plastic pants,
chess pieces to practice moving until we understand their power
and when we don’t, Roman and I argue
that there’s another way to play
Explanation:
