Rain.

Rain.

This is day five of rain, since I’ve been counting. Day five of waking to pale gray light, and what seems like the efforts of the world to wash itself down the drain. It’s as though the earth is trying to scour itself clean, but everyday it finds its work unfinished. Maybe one more deluge and we can start over. No one build an ark this time. Allow Mother Nature to truly start from scratch.

It’s heartening actually, watching the world do the equivalent of sitting down in the shower. Disregarding the water bill, watching rivulets make their way down the porcelain, naked and inglorious. There is no hiding from water. Her memory is deep, long, and infinite. Knowing that water first held you as you lay nestled in the womb, it is water that saves you at the end of the day. It sanctifies you, and for a moment there is nothing more holy that it’s light scalding of skin. Some may find these days of non-stop rain depressing and that’s fair. When I look out the window though, I marvel at the bathing world, another being searching for a cleansing strength and renewal. There are Impatiens on my balcony, blossoming like orgasmic ‘Hallelujah’s!’, their deep purples and girlish pinks reaching for the sunless sky. Tending to their pot I offer prayer. Let me become like them. Let me blossom where I should drown.

It’s currently quiet. The rain has stopped for the moment, allowing the clouds to move aimlessly across the sky. They break and rejoin like lovers incapable of figuring it out, the leads in an eternal movie playing just for me. I wait for the tangle of cords constricting my heart to break open like the clouds, offering me peace and a brief glimpse of a royal blue sky. With stars like diamonds blinking back at me from heavens away, I wonder if there is a God and if they are as interested in me as I am.