Luminous gray and engulfing
Covers the sun
A shadow passes over me
At first a single drop falls on my face
Waking me to the sense of rain
I feel it's cool wetness as it sinks into my skin
Suddenly I'm at camp
My mom is coming to pick me up
She's got a cooler with snacks in it for me
After a long day in the hot sun
Then I feel the second drop
And suddenly it's Christmas
I'm warm and happy
Everyone is drinking hot chocolate
As they sing "deck the halls"
It starts to sprinkle
Drops hit my face one after another
I feel them caress my face gently
I close my eyes
One drop fades into another
As the storm rapidly becomes more intense
Raindrops are falling all around
It's hard to tell one from another
I'm drenched with emotions
The happiness of the past�
I desperately try to grip the raindrops
But they run off my hands
I can only feel them for a moment
As the roll off my brow and fall in pools at my feet
The pain
The knowledge
The loss
It's cold and I'm alone
There's no sunshine where I'm standing
I fall to my knees
Now drops of water fall from my eyes
As well as from the sky
My clothes are soaked all the way through to my skin
And no one around me seems to notice
I'm drenched
But everyone around me is dry
How can they not notice the downpour
That suddenly struck me?
Memories
Like an overwhelming flood
Of individual raindrops
With untraceable boundaries
One seeming to fade into the next
Wash over me
Sitting in a room full of people
Who are no longer there
And everything seems far away
It appears to them that I am there with them
But somehow I'm gone
Standing in a redwood forest with my mom
Baking Christmas cookies with her
Staring up at a tree as I lay on the grass alone
And cry
February 2002
Andrea M. Horvath
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