Rain by Rachel Lechwar (19, Florida)*

This is the kind of rain that falls down in sheets, the kind that makes the sky into a blank, crinkled sheet, torn by jagged bolts of lightning and ripples of thunder. The light flashes across my textbook, and I think of the way it mimics a flickering flashlight. My father’s eyes dart between the smudgy road and the cars that are but blurs of red and blue and black with windows melting like ice cream.

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I try to discern any meaning beyond those steady streams, but it is blank. Some buildings, some honey-coated street lights but beyond that, blank. The back window is a target for the pouring raindrops; they shatter against the solid frame and tumble onto the road where they will be tossed by rubber wheels. Tossed into puddles before they return to meet the blank sky again. And brake lights shine in solidarity, forming a single-file line along these flooded streets. 

It’s a little beautiful, isn't it? To watch the world be washed away… to watch our view melt away the illusion of what we assumed we had created to last? 

In Florida, we live with rainstorms, hurricanes, tropical depression, seasonal depression- we are all neighbors. We learn to coexist in constant motion. But, I look back and it is all a blur... my childhood, the moments we slipped in between, the memories that once gathered in puddles. The sun rose and set, and it evaporated each memory before they could all flood the streets. So, when it rains, I call them back and let them gather, let myself settle in this melting pot of time that gives me the pretty illusion of rainbows (mostly in the form of graffiti art along highway buildings, but I stare and soak in their meaning all the same). 

And the radio hums nostalgic tunes, and the lightning flashes within a blink. And sometimes I don’t think the rain brings back any memories at all, only the memory of having memories and seeing that through this fog. I think I am trapped- secluding myself in this bubble- because I am still searching for hidden meaning on the horizon line. But, as it turns out, there are far too many buildings, cars, signs, thoughts, raindrops, memories, questions to discern anything, so I sit in the chaotic silence of my head. The silent chaos. The noise that is noise-cancelling. The tunnel-vision, fixating on one detail at a time. 

That is how I watch the rain- one detail at a time while a billion others flood into the background of this empty page. And sometimes, I think that if I just had everything figured out or if I operated under the illusion that I did, life would come without a cost. The rain would pass, the clouds would clear, and I’d be satisfied to walk outside this car and meet the world with a stable mind and a steady heart. A heart that does not shatter under the pressure of raindrops or shake under crackles of thunder overhead. 

So, I don’t know. I don’t know how to navigate through this or twist meaning from these bits I notice all around. You see I’m trying, don’t you? You see that I’m trying to see? And is that enough, or am I static with thoughts just floating in the midst of indecision and details that will dissolve overnight?

I don’t know. I wish I could say I did. I wish I could say that I am good or taking concrete steps towards that ideal. Maybe I am good and I just can’t see through this blank sky. I desperately need to write my thoughts upon it, but they never seem to stay. So, I just sit in my bubble and soak in the rain, watching it race down the window pane like cars down strips of highway. And I wonder if these words are as fragile as the fading raindrops I see. Here, and then gone, just like me.