He Tasted Like Rain After a Drought

The sky that day was bruised — half gray, half gold — like it couldn’t decide between holding on or letting go. The air was heavy with dust, and silence clung to everything like a forgotten prayer.

I stood on the old railway bridge where the world seemed to pause between leaving and arriving. Then I saw him.

He didn’t walk toward me — he drifted, like wind through dry grass, like a memory sneaking back into the present. His hair was dark, his shirt damp with humidity, and his eyes… they held that strange kind of calm that makes you believe you’ve met him before — maybe in another life, or maybe in a dream you couldn’t wake from.

He smiled. Just that. And it was enough to shake something loose inside me — something that had been quiet for too long.

“You look like someone waiting for rain,” he said softly.

“And you,” I whispered before I could stop myself, “look like someone it might follow.”

The Beginning of Rain

He wasn’t a stranger for long. We began to meet — in the library where old books smelled like dust and forgotten love letters, in cafes where steam curled like secrets, in empty parks that hummed with things unsaid.

He never tried to impress; he simply was. There was poetry in his pauses, warmth in his silences, and a quiet promise in his laughter that made the air around him feel alive.

He’d say things like,

“Love doesn’t have to be loud to be real.”

“Some people speak to your soul before they ever touch your skin.”

I started writing again because of him — words flowed like rivers breaking a dam. He told me once that I reminded him of the scent of first rain — soft, uncertain, but full of life.

And maybe that’s why I didn’t notice when the sky started changing.

The Storm

It happened quietly, the way all endings do. His messages slowed. His laughter grew distant. And when I looked into his eyes, there was thunder hiding there — something he couldn’t say, something I couldn’t fix.

One evening, he showed up on that same bridge, where it had all begun. The clouds were thick and low, pressing down like an unanswered prayer.

He took my hand but didn’t meet my gaze. “I’m leaving,” he said.

“Why?” My voice cracked, but the question barely made it out.

He sighed — the kind of sigh that carries a lifetime inside it. “Because love is supposed to heal, not haunt. And I don’t know how to stay without hurting you.”

The rain began — sudden, wild, unforgiving.

I stood still, my tears blending into the downpour. He kissed my forehead — gentle, almost apologetic — and in that moment, I understood.

He tasted like rain after a drought.

Like everything I’d been waiting for, and everything I could never hold on to.

Then he was gone. Just like that — swallowed by the storm.

The Aftermath

Days turned into months, and the rain stopped visiting. The bridge felt emptier, the wind quieter. I’d walk there sometimes, tracing our laughter on the air, pretending it still lingered.

I tried to forget, but love doesn’t fade — it transforms. It seeps into the corners of your being, hiding in your breath, your heartbeat, the spaces between your thoughts.

Sometimes, I’d hear a song on the radio that felt like his voice. Sometimes, I’d dream of him standing in the rain, smiling as if to say, “See? You’re still alive.”

The Memory That Stayed

Years later, on a random afternoon, it rained again — the kind of rain that makes the whole world smell like nostalgia. I ran outside, stood barefoot, and let it soak me completely.

For a moment, I swore I could feel him there — beside me, quiet as ever.

The drops kissed my face like whispers of something that once was.

I closed my eyes and smiled.

Because even though he was gone, he had left something behind — a heartbeat that matched the rhythm of falling rain.

And maybe that’s what love really is. Not forever.

Just moments that never leave — sounds, scents, feelings that stay even after the person doesn’t.

He was never mine to keep, but he was mine to remember.

And every time it rains, I do.

He tasted like rain after a drought —

and somehow, that taste still lingers,

soft, wild, and impossibly alive.