"Let the Rains Come In"

The deep sapphire velvet of the couch caresses my tender thighs. The light from the fireplace next to the couch covers the white carpet in a dark auburn film. It hisses and crackles. The couch sits in front of the windows that take up the entire wall. I look out. The world is entirely gray. The clouds have melted into each other, and the sky has taken on the reflection of the earth below it, a lifeless, endless land. My house feels like a bomb shelter; I cannot see across the river outside. I do not see the flaming lights of the adjacent river towns, I do not hear the roar of the steam engines, and I do not feel the rumble of the highways so deeply embedded in my chest. The sky mutes everything, everyone. The only noises I hear, the only noises my body lets me hear, are the sputters of the fireplace and the sound of you, the rain. You have a particular noise, and it varies, depending on your mood. Today, it’s a rumbling hum. Your droplets tap on the window only centimeters away from my face; your fingertips try to escape the world outside. “Let me in,” you whisper. 

I’ve learned to appreciate your growls, your thunders, and your darkness. I’ve learned to appreciate you because you do such good for me. You teach me to think. As I sit on the blue velvet, my thoughts diffuse out of my nostrils, out of my window, and float next to your droplets, but against your grain, straight up to the clouds. My mind sits high where I can see all aspects of my life, of my past, my present, and future, and I think. I sit on the edge of the clouds with you and watch everything unfold. I think about losing a dear childhood friend when I was a kid; I think about what my new life will be like away from home, away from this blue couch, but then my thoughts drift right back there to it. On the blue couch I sit, and I think about thinking. You comfort me like a warm friend. You wrap your arm around my shoulder and let me spill my mind into your lap, where I lie exposed and vulnerable. 

You bring me back to when I was sitting on the front stone porch of my family’s summer home in the south of France, basking in the midday sunshine. In this town, the cobblestone streets housed quiet old ladies who shopped at a very limited number of stores and swung open the cracked, white window shutters of their homes. This house in particular, centuries old, sat at the end of a long dirt road about a mile from town. The road was lined on either side by towering trees with bright green leaves of shades unnamed, which molded themselves into a tunnel. There, I sat on the porch, with a field of endless, shimmering grass in front of me. I felt the sun seep through the pores on my cheeks, filling me with light. I shut my eyes for a moment and felt the heat against the backs of my eyelids while I watched the color change from black to a deep, blood orange. I remembered a moment then; the same heat that seeped through my skin brought me back to a sweet summer night at my grandfather’s house as a child with apple juice and buttery toast. I thought about swimming in the deep end of his pool for the first time with my new flippers, then hopping out of the pool to run to my father who held a towel stretched across his arms’ wingspan, waiting to envelop me and dry me off in a warm hug. 

I opened my eyes back to reality to look at the trees planted on either side of the house. Their vines snaked down the length of the house, rooting themselves in the wrinkles of the stone. As my eyes traced their lines, I wondered how old the house was. I wondered if I would ever bring my children back here every other summer the way my parents brought me. I wondered if I would give them flippers to swim with so they could feel like the mystical deep-sea creatures that I felt like as a child. I imagined giving my own children, who looked like altered versions of myself, warm hugs after a night swim. I thought what I would look like then, as wrinkled as the stone I stared at. The leaves fluttered intermittently as the wind decided to blow. They flickered visions of greens and yellows, and the branches were painted with a warm honey brown. The skin on my forearm heated, and the hairs reflected the precious light. My arm, warm on top but shadowed and sweaty on the underside, stuck itself to the red and white plastic checkered tablecloth underneath it. I lifted it up to notice the perspiration of my skin, now left in miniscule droplets on the plastic. The wetness, something so strikingly different from the sensations covering the rest of my entirety, made me crave a drink of cold water. As my mind began to recollect itself, peeling its remnants off of the grass, the vines and the leaves, and my legs began to lift my body from the wooden chair to bring me back inside to continue work, to mend a tattered relationship, to deal with problems that have done nothing but clutter my mind, you arrived. I felt you slowly, on the top of my head, on the edge of my collarbones, and atop the hairs on my arms. Your droplets fell lightly, hesitantly. The light continued to glow. And then I felt you all at once. You soaked your way through my hair and in between the threads of my shirt. I focused on nothing but the sensations of you. Then, I watched my mother run past me into the house with a pool towel draped over her head. She shot me a look of confusion as to why I was outside in the rain. I smiled back. Don’t be scared mom, I thought. I focused on the way your drops ran down the center of my face, the bridge of my nose, and off the tip of my tongue, supplying me with the cold water that I so longed for. 

❖

You used to terrify me. I’ve watched you take on many forms, many personalities. Another night, when I was young, I remember you particularly sharply. My father sat poised in the driver’s seat of our car, hands grasped on ten and two. His shoulders tensed with every word my mother muttered under her breath over some argument. My brother sat quietly next to me, with hands intertwined nervously. The tension between my parents grew so thick in the air, I could barely move my body. God forbid I sneezed, God forbid I coughed, God forbid I attracted the slightest attention towards my little being. I was prodded by the sharp tone of my father and dizzied by the incessant criticisms of my mother. I wanted to scream. My brother’s eyes were locked outside of the car window as the street flew by. I looked out of my side as well. The sky took on a bitter twilight; the dark street below our car slickened with your skin. Here, I saw you, in all your glory, turning once dry, abrasive asphalt into a freshly developed photograph. You knocked wildly along the front windshield in an effort to overshadow the sharpness and dizziness with your own reverberations. The streetlights reflected off  your skin like stars melted into the fabric of the universe. You roared louder. The windshield wipers thrashed. His tone sharpened and her string of words threaded through my ear, into my body, wrapped themselves tightly around my organs, and made their way out the other ear. He howled. She wailed. I bubbled. And suddenly, you took over. The car slid aggressively to the right. My father’s hands clutched onto nine and three to grasp the little control he had left. The tires of the car screamed, the tension finally suffocated us all, but before we released cries of our own, the car stopped sliding and continued on its original path. I heard nothing. I heard not the howling of my father; I heard not the wailing of my mother. I heard only you. You could have killed me. But thank you, thank you, for the peace and quiet. 

With you, I am in the present. My mind may travel far. I may long for an unknown love, I may reminisce sharp moments I wish to alter. I may relive a saccharine childhood summer, I may imagine the faces of my children I’ll have once I am grown, but because of you, I always come back. In the car my parents’ thoughts boiled over as they argued over the past, and my anxiety of an everlasting argument increased, but eventually, we were all reeled back and hushed by you. On the stone porch, my mind drifted with the wind, and my past and future tangoed wildly with the leaves. But once you showed, once you enveloped me in your noise, in your touch, in your breath, I was present. But now, sitting here listening to you, you let me spill myself into you. You let my mind run up to you, but always manage to bring me back down. Being brought back down to the present lets my mind clear, my thoughts quiet, and my self-awareness grow. I can absorb my surroundings and embrace the now. Here, on this couch, I can think of my past, I can think of my future, but I am always returned to myself, to my skin, and to my own being. Thanks, to you.