It rains again. Not dainty, dewy droplets like usual in this sun stained place, but fierce and wet and plenty. It pours outside, pounding on the windows and making little lakes where the doors can’t get their feet to quite touch the ground. The crackling fire and cups of warm hot chocolate pretend that they don’t hear the sound of water on glass, but my eyes look outside and they know. They aren’t fooled.

I love the rain, I write to you. It’s my favorite. I listen to the wind whip through the trees and the fire crackle as rouge water droplets touch it’s hot, flaming skin. I wish it would rain here more, I say, looking out into the black night sky and imagining the clouds bunched together in huddled sadness. It makes me feel clean, like something that can wash away the past and just leave the rough, raw now. Like a shower for sins.

Not waiting for you to write back, I press my face against the window and blow puffs of dragon steam on the glass. It is cold against my face, a cold block of ice against the fever of thoughts. Puddles grow outside, faces blemished with the ripples of the new falling rain. The world throws back her hair, closes her eyes, and drinks. Drinks in the tears of the sky and lets the water fill the holes and cracks in the places where she couldn’t breathe. She reaches out her arms and washes off the ashes, the soot, the hurt. She boasts big and green and beautiful. And thirsty. Ever thirsty.

I come back to the computer screen and look at the 1 near the mailbox. I love the rain, you write. Someday, I’m going to move to Seattle. It rains there every day, good, quenching rain. You should come with me. We can live there together. The midnight words flash dark against the clean, white screen, challenging, beckoning. The rain still pounds on the windows, still seeps under the door and into my heart.

It takes me outside. The wind rushes around my weak legs and pulls my hair like a child. And it though the cold, winter night bites at my bare ankles, I don’t feel. All that is is the rain on my skin and down my cheeks. The water that falls from the sky and mixes with the soft droplets of tears on my face until they are one. The sigh of the earth as she drinks in the water she has wanted for so long, the lust of the clouds, the whipping of the leaves on the trees. It is all there, it is all me. Not until the air coaxes my toes into a shade of lilac purple do I feel the cold, feel way my clothes cling wet to this fragile body, and make my way through the storm, back inside.

I will, my frigid fingers punch out slowly. I will go with you. And like the earth, I sigh. Because I’m not thirsty anymore. After an eternity, I can finally breathe.