Rain Knows My Name Better Than You Do"

Rain Knows My Name Better Than You Do

They said it wasn’t a storm. Just “heavy turbulence.”

That’s what the pilot called it—seconds before the screaming started.

One second I was thumbing through a battered book in seat 17A, and the next, the sky split open like a wound, and the plane tore downward. There was no final speech from the cockpit. No time for prayer. Only chaos. Screams that tore my eardrums. Oxygen masks that never fell. Gravity folding me inward like paper.

And then—black.

When I woke, it was raining.

Not a drizzle, not a shower. Rain that felt biblical. Angry.

It hissed through leaves and pooled into my mouth like it wanted me to drink or drown. The plane was gone. Or at least, most of it. I was lying near a crumpled wing, my left ankle swollen like a balloon and a deep gash slicing down my arm like a red thread unraveling.

No rescue came. Not that day. Not the next. Not for 32 days.

The jungle had no name I knew. But the rain?

It felt personal.

It fell with rhythm, with voice. It trickled down my spine like fingers. Sometimes it felt cruel, like it was trying to scrub me away. Other times, it was the only thing that kept me sane.

Water was never the problem. Food was.

The jungle gave, but only if I asked gently. Berries that looked poisonous were sometimes sweet. Mushrooms hid in mossy groves. I learned which leaves stung, which bugs I could crush for salt. Hunger changed me. My stomach roared, but my senses sharpened.

I became animal.

Days stopped being numbers. They became stories.

The day I followed a monkey for two hours, just to see what he ate.

The day I found a shoe and broke down because it wasn’t mine.

The day I danced in the rain out of sheer madness—and felt my brother’s laughter echo in my ribs.

I missed my brother more than anything.

He should have been on that plane. But he missed it—delayed at security.

I remember screaming at him before I boarded.

"You're always late!"

Now I would’ve given anything for him to show up late—just once more.

I stopped thinking in sentences.

I started thinking in textures: wet bark, warm blood, damp moss, cold stone.

I stopped thinking in time.

I started thinking in weather:

The rain was softer today.

The clouds moved like slow hands.

The air tasted like thunder.

I forgot the sound of my own voice.

But the rain? The rain never stopped talking.

On what would later be called Day 32, I heard something different.

Not thunder. Not birdsong.

Voices.

Real ones.

They spoke Spanish. A language I barely knew—but it didn’t matter. I stumbled out from behind a tree, hands raised like a ghost surrendering. My hair was matted. My clothes shredded. My body barely a shape anymore. One man gasped when he saw me.

“¿Cuánto tiempo?” he asked.

How long?

I looked up at the clouds. “Since the sky broke,” I whispered.

Now I’m back.

Back in the world of car horns, air conditioning, and fake smiles.

They call me “the jungle girl” on TV. They ask me dumb questions:

“How did you stay alive?”

“What did you miss the most?”

“Do you believe it was a miracle?”

I always answer with a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes.

Because how do I explain that the jungle didn’t try to kill me—

It cradled me.

That the rain became my oldest friend.

That the wild didn’t break me.

It introduced me to myself.

My brother hugs me like I’m made of glass now.

He still says “sorry” every day.

And every time, I whisper: “You were meant to miss it.”

I don’t tell him that I still sleep with the windows open.

That I play rain sounds on loop just to feel home again.

That I keep a stone from the jungle in my pocket, like a secret I don’t want the world to touch.

Because the world keeps asking: “Aren’t you glad it’s over?”

And I keep thinking:

Over?

No.

Some things stay.

Some voices echo.

Some names the rain remembers forever.

And I was one of them