For a long time, I’ve been silent…a prisoner of my thoughts. Sucked inside my head. Doubtful. Pensive. Suspicious. Pondering my dilemma with memories of you. Her. Them. Him.  Endless rows of lines…too much information…the zeitgeist of a lonely planet. Yes, information…What I must know and what I shouldn’t. This endless news cycle… wheels of deception. You’ve no doubt heard of this before…The concept of prisons of the mind and so on? There’s truly nothing new under the sun. Every view I’ve tried to spin comes back to me the same way…nothing new…nothing new…nothing new.

But still, there is a sense of familiarity. In the literary world, the mind plays way more tricks than in the real world. Clichés and tropes abound…written mumbo jumbo like so much voodoo wordplay. Yes, prisons I’m familiar with…of the mind that is. I wrote about them a few times. But I didn’t realize until just now
how the idea still permeates my thought process. Whatever we cling to eventually becomes a prison. For example, these days I find myself holding onto hope. Surrounding myself with it like a moth-eaten favorite blanket.

Yes, maybe I’ve morphed into a prisoner of hope. After all, our thoughts swirl around so many things…why can’t hope be a prison? This room feels like one. And if it is, then what else is there? What do I have to hold on to? What about need? Is “need” a prison? Is longing? Is sex or death? And what about hope? Do you even care? Am I hopeless in my hope for a change to finally occur? Too many questions for an introduction to a character…not enough for a eulogy… far too much for an epitaph. A blur of words with hazy facts. Lazy to a fault. I’ll leave it there for now.

Speaking of the here and now, it seems that now I’ve got more time to ramble…musings for the miserable, if you will. This room is gray and nondescript for beginning a story. But that’s a slip of the tongue because the story clearly has a beginning…somewhere down the road, not here. Between white lines and yellow, exit signs of green, and mechanical voices on rental car radios. Threatening forecasts and storms we left behind. Summer sun and better days we’ve seen.

Last week, we sat at Lido Beach on a blanket full of promises, a sage green umbrella shading that same mischievous sun…the one you thought you owned. Along with a moon, you once called a friend. Forecast and threats of inclement weather. Yes, a harbinger that predicted trouble well in advance. Yes, a storm was coming. Or was it here all along? Lyrics in a Whitaker song, “Thunder without the Storm.” ‘What do you call a last call? When should you let go?” I should have known when you said that it was your favorite song. Be that as it may, we can’t figure out the journey ahead of time…. we have to go down the path with the inherent knowledge that there could be a crash or three or four, caused by fate, by you, or by me.

Quite simply, we have to step into the darkness sometimes. Feel our way with words, especially when love is blind. In time, we find shelter, or we become someone else’s shelter. We want to feel safe against the storms of life and those of our own making. You looked at me that way; I saw you much the same. Blaming when I failed to keep records of our crimes. Ammunition for future fights. Escaping into our desires, fires replaced by the glow of flashlights, searching for clues. This is why I’m here, is it not? Clues to a mystery? How do things get lost? How do people disappear? How we build kisses on dreams, homes as prisons…extensions of a thought process. Foundations born of sand; pretty castles built on stilts. More a place to pay our bills…fill our plates with future dreams, lovers’ schemes, and secret friends. And in the end, pretending we are lovers on refrain. Longing for contrition, haunted by the memory of rain.

TM DiSarro
©2026 TM DiSarro / MindScapes Publishing

From: THE MEMORY OF RAIN

(Available on Amazon)