Performative rain gets results

Poetry from "An American Mouth in Thailand"

This piece is part of a mini-series based on a recent trip.

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Yesterday’s gunfight was highly effective. A lightning bolt strikes a motorist out of sight down the well-paved highway through the jungle.

I turn the throttle on my Honda scooter as far as it’ll go to keep up with my best friend. My 7-11 plastic-shopping bag poncho faps relentlessly, held in place by my helmet, which I angle down to not get it pushed up by the wind. I can’t handle the words echoed by surviving kin, “he wasn’t...”

Even if this helmet does nothing, I’d rather die fair and square with my judgement in tact. For two hours, every second is a long conversation with death, and I only do it to please my friend and have enough material. I’d rather die than make someone uncomfortable. Mutilation, face shredded, an altered life in an instant. Like my dad held up by a red-hot meat hook b/t the ribs for 8 years, hit-and-run by a car on his bike. I don’t remember if I’ve broken a bone.

Rain on the asphalt wafts me away to wet-blacktop recess, another day inside as a kid to click the TV or open National Geographic to a wide-open world from the couch.

I sit on a cushion with my eyes on the road, vegetation, sea breeze, yellow-green rainstorm in passing. I am dead and alive—at peace for a very long second. I’m ball lightning, chasing a best friend. There’s a text on my phone from a cousin. “Life is so precious,” with a photo of my wife and me, and her and her husband. Their child is three.

We arrive at the Emerald Pool. But it’s sapphire blue. What a disappointment! Do cultures see colors differently or have different words for precious stones?

While swimming, I meet a kid named Ban. He and his friends think my name is funny. Trevor sounds like water swishing in the mouth. But our names share the same meaning.

Author photo: Thai highway, April 18, 2026