A meadow, a shop and the rain.

He has always liked the rain, but this is too much.

 

The walk through the forest is sweet, spring is beginning to show and the meadow is green. From the shelter of the trees he watches the rain settle in soft misty shadows, and then he walks on, through freshly fallen puddles to the village shop. 

Inside, he buys a coffee, bread, and cakes and looks at the headlines of the paper, but he sees nothing that induces him to buy it. 

“No news is good news,” his mother tells him, though she is not there.

And then he steps outside and start to retrace his way.

The sky unleashes a sudden fury, a deluge of water and then hail. He tries to shelter, instead, he is soaked. 

He likes the rain. 

 

When he is 10, he sits outside under the porch watching it as it falls, his body tingles with expectation and excitement.

When he is 17, his first real girlfriend calls him rain-man. (she had never seen the film).

When he is 23, he stands on a wooden balcony, also covered, and watches a muddy street in Guatemala become a lake. It is night time, but majestic lightning searing through the thunder, illuminates everything in stark silhouettes. Even though colour has been invented, it is for the day-time only in these mountains.

 

But today, it is too much.

originally published in The Archives - sometime and someplace.