“It’s Pouring Outside”

Raindrops trace my eyelids, mingling with the salt cradled at their corners. They dribble down my cheeks and pool in the hollows of my ears. The Wet feels for bare skin, spreading across the crimson fibers of my t-shirt, hungry, clinging, wanting more . . until I know I’m soaked.

The Wet doesn’t comfort the way I expect it to (if one can expect anything from a rainstorm with its own agendas). I didn’t expect this greediness. It’s cold and bores like a clammy drill into my bones until I gasp and wonder why the flowers seem to smile at the ashen sky: how this frigid grasp could ever coax things to life.

I look down at the ink fleeing from my scuffed Converse. Little purple Sharpie stars leaking into the gutter . . . plink, plunk . . . plink, plunk . . . and my thoughts careen downward, into the pipes where there’s no sleepy streetlamp glow to guide them. Headlights swish past like disembodied owl eyes, yellow and luminous yet stoic, keeping to themselves. I close my eyes again. . . .

A light beams into existence not far behind me. Skin shields my irises from the way its brightness threatens the shadows beginning to pool amid the puddles of Wet and rain. Its glow is infectious, though. Other porch lights bloom in the Wet under roofs and overhangs until I open my eyes, and I see how they prosper, unwavering and multitudinous.

My mind’s spiral deepens, then abates, and my thoughts gradually clamber out of the sewer drain, their whispery fingers gripping the rusted iron bars of the gutter grate against the current. I stoop, feeling my knees grind against the sidewalk, and with goose pimpled fingers, help each one find its feet again. One . . . two . . . five . . . twelve . . . and together they follow me inside.