Rain

It's raining harder now. I sit on the top step, tapping my feet, one after the other on the stone. It's still light out, but the dark gray clouds roll slowly in from the southwest.

My skin bristles as raindrops hit my feet. It's colder than I expected. I lay out my arms on my lap, exposing them to the sky. My hair stand on end for a moment, and then lay flat as water begins to cover them.

I turn my face up to the sky. Raindrops fall, out of rhythm, covering my skin. Cheeks, nose, chin, eyelids, and even eyelashes, where tiny beads form from the tiny splashes. Strangely, not a trop touches my lips, no matter how long I hold my face there.

The wind blows from the west, cooling every drop on my skin. I open my eyes once more at the sound of a passing car. Thunder gently rumbles overhead, but it does not frighten me as it usually would.

With a new breeze, fresh air fills my nostrils. Senses overcome by the wet and damp smell the warm earth gives off under the rain. It's almost musty, yet clean all the same. The ground is awake.

Hair sticks to the side of my face. Stringy, rumpled, and soaked, lulling my head back with the slightest weight. I pull back. As I watch my skin, I see each drop slowly sink in. It seems gone, the water no longer has a visible presence, but it leaves a feeling in me and on me: full, moist- as if I have taken in the storm.

Songs of rhythm echo around me. The tapping in the gutter, water sliding from the roof, and the grass bending under every relentless drop of mercy from the sky. The trees sag some. Another car passes on the street. The thunder quiets now.

I look over Mrs. Joan's house. The view has not changed. I remember. I remember candy dots, watching the lightning come, sitting on the same step I rest on now. I remember our old white door, and the little red bugs that crawled over the stone in the heat before the storms came. I lift my feet. I remember when my feet would never have left such big spots of dry stone beneath. Summer is here. Never measured by heat, but measured by the first storm. Thankfully the same.