Resurrection of Rain

#152: Remembering Rain

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion...

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It's been raining the past 7 days here in Sydney. And it's the cold kind of rain that sends random shivers up your skin. Sleep has been kind. Each morning opens up possibilities but each night calls into account the ones that have closed. Much like counting change on the bus ride home.

My mind wanders off to a forgotten time when he was the apple of my childish eye - the one who moved like a swan amongst barefoot children who walked more like chickens. When he turned to look, you yearned to be at the right spot so you could receive the glance, though devoid of real meaning. His were eyes you could drown in. And drown, I did. There was no other reason. No other merit by which I could justify my innocent craving. He was merely beautiful to behold and that was enough to sustain me from fourth grade till 2003. His name is Rain.

And he was the last of my childhood that I had had to discard. As you grow older, you start asking the harder question of "why." Why do you like this person? Why do you look at him this way? Why do you think there is a chance? Why do you think there isn't? And so the list grows longer and longer until feeling is reduced to the rational. "I think I feel" has more weight than a naked "I feel." I no longer trust "I feel."

But when it rains and it's cold and you catch glimpses of his eyes in a roomful of strangers, your heart leaps once more at the memory of that unreasonable fire which burns on nothing but air. Rain returns to stride across the room and command your gaze. He resurrects to call you to throw out your life vest and drown in his eyes. For a second, you embrace his gaze... and in the next, you find yourself riding the bus home counting your change.