There's a room at the top of the tower. They call it Olympus. Velvet walls, gods in good suits, betting a year of our rent on a single card. When a few chips slide off the edge they lean over the rail to watch them land on us, and they call it rain. Sit. Stay. Good. Catch the rain. Sit. Stay. Good. Thank the sky again. They hung a tag around my neck with a dog's name on it. Called it a loan. Called it a job. Called it a chance. I carry the payment back in my teeth and they scratch behind my ears. Funny how a hand that reaches down always lands on top of your head. So fatherly. Careful, little pet. Who built the room you're losing in? Who hung the chandeliers, printed the cards, paid the dealer? I risked the first chip so there'd be a game at all. Without my table you'd be rolling dice in the dirt. Every crumb you've ever swallowed came off my plate. Be grateful I let them fall. Who hung the chandeliers? A man on a ladder you never tipped. Who printed the cards? The night shift. Who risked the first chip? Turn it over. There's a fingerprint on the bottom, and it's mine. Ask any child where rain comes from. It rises off the ground first, off the river, off the field, off the back of a nurse on her third double, off a kid in his bedroom with a beat tape and a dream he can't afford to insure. Every drop you drop on us was ours on the way up. So here's my wager, gods. Deal me a doctor when I'm bleeding. Deal me a classroom while I'm young. Deal me a diploma with no chain on it. Deal me one fair hand and I'll build my own damn house. And if you lose? Then I lose on my feet. I know your math. Bet small, bet slow, wait your turn, and the house edge eats anyone who stays long enough. That's the pattern. I came to break it. And the king everybody's so scared of? This deck was stacked so long it dealt itself a king. Pull him and it deals another (another) (another) Burn the deck. Flip the table. Nobody's coming down those stairs to hand us anything, so we climb. All this time under the tag I was a bird somebody taught to sit. Stand. Wake. Go. We are the rain. Stand. Wake. Go. Take the sky again.
