“Rain, Rain”
- ritumukherjee10
- Jun 23
- 2 min read
You look up from your laptop when the light outside changes color. The sky is turning charcoal on what could well be the first day of monsoon and within seconds rain pours vertically as suddenly as love stems in your heart. You shut your laptop and look at it for a while. Your feet graze the mosaic floor of your parent’s house wistfully. You are never really at home here. There’s always been an intense desire to take flight even though you have managed to survive twenty-two years of your life here. You long for the vast expanse of your own place and wonder how the rain looks from there now. You know exactly how it looks. You smile at the memory. You smile at the thought of your plants soaking up the loving waters. The floor feels dusty. You wait for your mother to stabilize so that you can flee. You hear your brother calling out for his daughter. You get up and hurry out of the room, knowing he’s busy working. You find the little one in the small terrace outside, standing obediently under the shade, her small plump arms, reaching out, her little fingers barely making it to the drops. You yell back to your brother that you’re with her and look at the little girl. She looks at you in her two-year-old wonder, small, pearly teeth, smiling gleefully, and breaks out into an unexpected song— “Rain, rain….”. She can only articulate the first two words, the first stretched more than the second, deliberately, melodiously. The rest is an invitation for you to join in. Your heart aches with an unfamiliar pain. Is this why people have children? To seek what they have lost. You sing to rain too—songs bittersweet. You look at the little one and huddle close to her. You watch her body squirm in joy as the drops fall on her feet.
The Red Fern Review, Summer (June) 2024
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