When It Rains

Grabbing my hoodie and shrugging it around my shoulders, I briefly wonder why I bother-- I'm only going to get soaked anyway-- that's the point. But nevertheless I zip up my jacket, a purple From First To Last hoodie I got this summer, and walk outside. On the porch, I stop for a minute. Rain. Ever since I was little, I've been able to smell it coming before anything. Smell, see, touch, breathe. That's how it always happens.1

I stuff my already chilled hands inside my pockets and thunder down the steps. Tilting my head back I close my eyes and breathe gently as the rain kisses my skin. With every drop that clings I wash away things in a way that I've never been able to do in a shower. 2

Blink. Open my eyes and let tears meet the magic of rain. I like walking in the rain because I can say I'm not crying. As I walk, the photographs I could never take form inside my mind and I see it like a slideshow, one by one. 3

A girl walking down the road with rain mingling with the blood as it falls from the gashes on her arm-- Travelling downwards until they splash in unison on the wet black pavement under her barefeet. Children laughing and dancing in puddles as their skin gets drenched to the bone, unaware that at least one of them would grow up to become the girl in the first photograph. Buildings, dreary and cold, imposing on the lone silhouette of a man running from his past, or running towards his future. 4

That's all the rain is. Stories of what was, what is, and what could be. That is why I love the rain.5

I shake my head and make a unintelligible sound before turning around and heading back inside. The rain can wait another day. I have a story to tell.6