downpour
by Marla
Some days it feels like it will never stop raining. You find this easy to believe—the fact that there will always be fierce winds howling against your window, torrents of water slamming against concrete and steel and wood, nights darker than they ought to be. People tell you, sounding certain and large and really just trying to help, that there will be calm afterwards if only you can sit and wait out the storm a bit.
Everything looks different when it rains: from the fifteenth floor, inside a parked car, on the streets, from the shelter of a friend's home, underneath an umbrella, beside someone you love. Everything looks different, cloudy and clear at the same time, then suddenly the rain stops and these things are just things again. When you wake up in the morning you are safe and dry, as you should be, and there was a point that had to be made but you just missed it, barely. You'll get another chance somehow; this time you will have to wait out the sun.
