Twenty Minutes

 It was another one of those nights where the evening sky was sodden and heavy grey. I could practically feel it pushing down on me as I climbed inside my car. Time to drive home from work again. I followed the never ending dual red lights snaking their way around the corners of an aptly named road. The traffic kind of reminds me of a snake, the slow slither, stretching and retracting with each stop light.

 I hate this weather. A good old Oregon downpour is far preferable to this annoying mist coating the windshield. Not enough to keep the wipers on intermittent, but too much to go without using them at all.

 It felt good to get off that road and move at my own pace down the side streets. The same ones I took on the way to work in the morning. I almost ran over a suicidal squirrel on this very street. It swerved left, I went right, then it went right. Right under my car and out the other side completely unscathed. Lucky squirrel. Out on the country road, almost home. Well, it used to be a country road but the city keeps creeping. Most of the farms are gone, replaced by row houses in the most hideous shades of beige. They hit my yawn reflex.

 One more light. I caught it on green today. A left, down all the way to the end, and another left. In the house before the sky lets loose all that heavy stuff it looks like it's carrying, into the empty warmth. Into the dreams of a fitful sleep where I wait impatiently for the warmth to become something more than electric heat.