Drizzle

June 17, 1980

She stands in the rain.

The gentle drizzle wets her dark hair regardless which angle she holds the umbrella.

It is a chill drink she’s sipped for four whole days, making every day seem like the verge of evening.

She thinks of him and the things he said that made her warm inside, even with the rain.

She aches to tell her best friend about it all, a friend she’s not seen since the Friday before the weekend, and waits now for her to pick her up and drive to work.

The road is slick and the cars slide over it and the slippery layer of oil the train has stirred up.

And she worries a little about her friend, and the road from there to here, and she worries that she won’t arrive, and she won’t be able to tell her of this new man, this man with warm words that makes her feel warm inside.

But she waits, and let the rain paint her face as if painting tears, cool, hard flicks of rain that wets her dress and the flesh of her chest, and rubs against her with wet cold fingers, the way he rubbed his fingers over her.

She can still feel them, and the rise they brought about in both of them, and the warmth they caused inside and outside, and causes her now, if only to think about.

He says he’ll see her again, and she believes him, or at least wants to if only for the need to feel warm inside again.

The rain comes harder against her. Her face is moist. So is the space between her thighs, but not from rain.

She is scared her friend won’t come, and he won’t, and this makes her shiver as the rain beats a little harder on the stiff surface of the erect umbrella, each drop a drum beat, each drawing primitive feelings up inside of her she can’t completely explain. The heavier rain turns the street into a river, a broth with white foam rushing along the curb at her feet.

She sees a car slow, but it is not her friend. She blinks and thinks it is the man she hopes will come later, but it is not him either, and it passes with fading tail lights in a growing midst that seems more inside her than out, caused by her overheating – like the windshield of car that steams up, and she blames the clothing against her chest and the rain against her thighs, and the thoughts she has for what she will do when she finally does come.

And in the wind and wet, she no longer wants her friend to come, but him, and knows that she will be disappointed when the wrong person comes, and at the destination she must go to, and not the place where she needs to go.

The rain presses in on her, wetting her from head to toe, and the warmth to grow inside of her, impatient, maddening, frustrating warmth that will burn on until the right person comes to get her – if he comes at all.