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Rain


by Ethel Rohan


I am under the rain. Under. The. Rain.

The rain comes after me. Beats me. I wait for the boom of thunder, fork of lightning. In the rain, I am afraid. In the rain, I don't know where I am going. In the rain, I am fucking ridiculous.

I try to outrun the rain. My shoes sink into the dirt. Dirt made soft by the rain. Dark, dirty dirt. Dirt flecked with seeds. I have trammeled the seeds, killed whatever they were going to be. The rain beats harder, screams.

The dirt sucks on my feet, pulls me into the ground. I am stuck. The rain laughs, lunges.

I will get free. I will get to where I do not know where I am going.

When I get to where I do not know where I am going I will scrub myself of the dirt, the rain.

It will take a special tool to make me me again, I am so wet, so dirty.

Why does the rain think that I am so bad I need to be punished? Cleansed? You know, rain shouts, you know.

I want to get out of the rain, but don't want. I want the beating to stop, but don't want.

As soon as I am free of the rain, I will draw the rain. Only I can't draw the rain. It would look like black splices on the page, not like real rain. No one can draw the rain. Make it look real. I may be wrong. But I am right.

I tell the rain, stop rain. You can't do this, rain.

I have been in a dream and I have let you come after me and beat me and make me feel afraid and ridiculous. Let you make me believe that you are something that can't be drawn, something that I could never put down on the page and make others see, make myself see. But I can. I can and I will.

I will go out of the rain now because I can. I will go out of the rain because I know I can always come back into the rain. I can dance in the rain and sing in the rain and shout in the rain and draw in the rain and draw the rain and draw me and we will be seen. We will be seen, rain. And it will be awful and terrible and ugly and ridiculous and duck. It will be gorgeous and graceful and goose and gorilla and it will be any thing I fucking want it to be because this is the power I have now, you see. I can be in the rain and out of the rain and inside the rain and be the fucking rain.

Why didn't I get that before? Get that rain can be put on the page and that we're all in and out of the rain and the rain will come and go and come and go again and be changed by what it touches and change what it touches and we'll go on and on and be this way forever more and forever was and that's alright and I'm alright and the rain's alright and why did I ever start this anyway and where did I think it would take me and oh that's right because I was in the rain and it was raining so hard and I was afraid and I thought how no one could ever draw the rain and make it look like real rain and how rain rhymes with pain and how the rain comes at me and beats me and scares me and what does it matter what does any of it matter but it does matter everything matters and the rain matters and pain matters and whether or not we're afraid matters and what we can and can't make real matters and what we can and can't get down on the page matters because we matter and what's inside of us matters and what's around us matters and what touches us and what we do back to all this stuff matters and getting it all out of us matters and looking at it matters and making sense of it matters and still it rains and still I'm in the rain and still I am the rain.

I am the rain.

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