Rain

The glass glows blue under the strobe lights – so calm, so blue, so cold and fresh. Trembling beads wash down from the lip and break the smooth waterline, one by one, one with each thump of the music against the soles of my feet. My whole self turns with the pulse and squish of that stereo. Stomach jumps, up and down and up. Bones in my hand jitter. The little umbrella stirs and blows loosely in the glass.
You know, I have this image in my head, and I can’t shake it, of all these people – umbrellas and hoods and newspapers – skittering down the New York street like raindrops down a window. They’re looking down, down, down, always down. I’m looking at them, not from the street, but from above, in a building, and in a yellow raincoat. So high that the raindrops are wider than the cars, that the people are only pinpricks. I wonder if they’ve ever looked up and seen me, or seen the clouds roll home.
And, you know, once I sat in front of the glass, a pen in hand and the crashing rain before me, and I got it in my head that I would write it all down, every drop – only, I touched down that pen to paper, and all that came was a little blue dot. No words in my head clean enough to show you how it fell, in patters and stones and soft sizzling sheets. None playful enough to show you how it landed, the sighs and ripples, the drumming rings. The empty page – what a world. White as the wind – this still, raging white – and hollow as the prickling stars.
So instead, I stood up and I pressed my nose and my own two hands to the glass, for so long that it grew warm and waxy under my fingers. It started thinning, the glass, like it was melting, only softer. And I think, just maybe, I fell right through and became the rain.
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