WINTER 1994 Green rain fell on San Francisco. Shiny and chartreuse. Stumped civilians, stoners, and scientists alike until its mystery uncurled: airplane deicer, jelled onto wings and melted on descent. When I came to the city I knew no one. My law classmates used Latin phrases as punctuation, leaned their heads back into right angles. Their thoughts could fit into beer mugs. They gulped, exhaled, stared clean through. I was locked into space with a securely-fashioned seatbelt, tended to small tasks at hand, burned pots of coffee to numb sleepless ache, lived amphetamine in my lust for clarity. I leaned downtown from my window and admired the cracked gold polish on the hookers’ feet, their eyes hinting at prescience. Watched spent cigarette stumps roll into sidewalk crevasses. There were days when colored ice, offered by the sky, was a most welcome douse— it split me open, spoke to me its aurora jargon— and I was there, alive, as it slicked the streets with its strange tongue.
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