Where No Love Can Be

A mistake, to call it discomfort.

This? Nothing. Most don't understand; have never taken a moment to stop, turn their faces up, to genuinely feel it.

They do as their parent's did; still so much children, no matter how they insist otherwise. Running, muttering, whimpering; driven to panic and hissing hysterics by the slightest spot.

As though the rain is burning angel piss, as though it might scorch their eyes blind, melt the frowns from their faces.

Just rain; watching them huddle and hurry through it, never stopping, never slowing; never once considering their own response; what pleasure they might take in the bite and cold of it, the angel-finger sensation of rivulets running down their faces, their bodies.

Hereditary disease. Beyond any genetic defect or failing organ; the insanity we hand down, from parent to child.

Fortunate, I suppose. In that regard and so many others.

This rain...singing to me as it falls; crystal harmony, riding rainbows as it shatters against leaves and fingers and faces, as it paints the air. Songs whose lyrics I don't understand, but have heard since I was a boy, since I first learned the love of walking in the rain, feeling it hammer and burst against my scalp; shaved bald for that very purpose.

Child's fingers seeking entry, as though orphan phantoms might find some sanctuary in my skull, amongst the memories and fantasies that burn there.

Watching them, smiling, unable to help it; that same sickle-moon grin that brings so many to my bed, that slices their hearts open in the aftermath.

Not smiling back; only in the most fretful, frightened way: rabbit-things before a snarling wolf.

Not understanding, believing me insane, for this delight: for the thin jacket I wear, already sodden, for the flutter-eyed gasps as the rain sluices down, over and through: as its music saturates, sunshine in my soul, singing stories of the world I fell from, the dream that made me.

Lunatic, they think; addled, they whisper. When they arrive home, bustling and cursing, they'll tell stories of me, to the spouses they no longer love, to the children who have disappointed, the parents who endlessly betray: tell of the mad man they encountered on the way home, the rain-lover who smiled at them so strangely, who unsettled them inside.

Before the same cycles of lunacy begin, before they put on their masks and play their parts; pretending happiness where none can be.

And I'll still be here, wandering in the rain, until it ceases, the alien hymns grow silent, and I open my eyes newborn, baptised, a stranger to myself as much as to them.