The rain

Somedays it’s a spattering of rain. 

Droplets so light, they glide down your skin barely reaching you. 

It’s an assault that can be brushed from your skin with an unconscious wave of the hand and it vanishes. 

You forget you were ever wet. 

 

Other days, the pressure of the droplets is more assertive. 

Pressing into your skin, it requires more effort to brush away the trail of rain. 

On more turbulent days it invades your nest of safety, wetting your hair and sliding down your skin. 

The droplets surpass your eyebrows and are caught by the awaiting curve of your eyelashes. 

They are held in place for a moment before plummeting unceremoniously to the apple of your cheeks. 

During their journey, they begin to cloud your gaze. 

Preventing you from reaching the world with your eyes.

Holding you back from engaging with anyone or anything. 

 

On stormier days the siege appears from all sides and the wind clutches at you, grasping at your edges like a lifeline. 

The anchor sinks. 

And now your coat is just a drenched piece of fabric. 

It’s oppressively close to your soaked skin and provides no protection from an onslaught of rain. 

 

On the darkest days it seems like the storm will never stop and the rain will never stop falling. On those days you cast off the coat because the rain has rendered it useless. 

The pale fabric is tarnished and blotches of darkness appear until the fabric is waterlogged. 

What protection can it now offer?

So you tear away the constraints and give in to the ocean falling from the sky. 

Your boots begin to fill with water and your hair is a tangle of soaking tendrils that stick to your liberated skin. 

 

On those days I accept that the rain won’t stop falling. 

Not yet anyway. 

And the feeling of being drowned is all I will feel for a while. 

The rain washes away everything until all I can do is lie down and float on the roaring chaos. Letting it take me. 

Take parts of me. 

Until I’m laying on the road watching the rain surge towards me. 

 

It’s always there. 

Sometimes it’s just falling a little heavier. 

And sometimes your coat isn’t enough to protect you from it. 

Sometimes opening an umbrella is impossible.

And that’s why you have to accept the rain is a part of you, as it sinks into your skin and envelops your every waking moment.

The rain will never stop falling.

But I will never stop wearing my coat.