Skin of Rain

Name:(RAFI ULLAH)

The first drop falls like a confession.

Small, hesitant, afraid to disturb the silence it’s about to drown.

I stand in the doorway, watching the sky bruise itself into the color of storm. The clouds fold and unfurl, restless as a guilty conscience. Somewhere in the distance, thunder coughs awake.

It has been months since I last felt the rain on my skin. Months of dust clinging to me — the kind that’s not just dirt, but memory. You can wash your body a hundred times and still carry it in the cracks of your thoughts.

The second drop strikes my cheek, sliding down in a path my tears once knew well. I do not move.

---

They call it “weather” as if it’s something outside of us, as if storms don’t also rise in the hollow of the ribcage. But the truth is, I’ve been waiting for this. Not the storm itself, but the way it makes permission feel possible.

Because when rain falls, you can cry without explaining yourself.

You can shiver without saying you’re afraid.

You can drown for a moment and still come back breathing.

---

I step outside.

The third drop isn’t a drop anymore — it’s a rush, a curtain, a thousand small hands pressing against me at once. Cold fingers tap against my scalp, trace my jaw, slip into the folds of my clothes.

And there it is: the first pull of renewal.

People talk about fresh starts like they are something gentle, like opening a window and letting in clean air. But they never tell you that it can feel like a tearing — the storm doesn’t politely remove what you no longer need, it rips it away. It claws through your layers until the truth shows raw.

I tilt my head back.

---

The rain becomes my second skin. It doesn’t just touch me — it claims me. Every drop a wordless whisper: Let go. Let go. Let go.

But letting go is not always soft. Sometimes it’s the sound of a suitcase zipper you don’t want to pull closed. Sometimes it’s the echo of footsteps in a hallway that will never hear yours again. Sometimes it’s simply the weight of what will not be said.

The sky does not care about the poetry of it. The sky cares about cleansing, not comfort.

---

I remember you, standing in a different rain, years ago. You laughed like the downpour was applause. I wanted to stand beside you, but I stayed under the awning, afraid of what the water might reveal about me.

If I had stepped forward then, maybe I would have learned sooner that rain doesn’t ask for bravery — it gives it.

Now, with no one watching, I take each drop like a vow.

---

The storm grows heavier. It feels as though the clouds are trying to wash the entire street into the gutter. Puddles form around my feet, swallowing the shape of my shoes. My hair clings to my face. My breath fogs the air like smoke leaving a burning building.

And yet — something in me is lighter.

The rain cannot undo what has happened, but it can strip away the part of me that kept holding it like a sacred wound. It can take the jagged edges and smooth them, even if only for tonight.

---

I close my eyes.

Somewhere in this curtain of water, the past dissolves enough for me to step forward without its constant pull. Somewhere, the dust is finally gone. Somewhere, the version of me who feared storms has already walked away.

When the rain begins to soften, I realize it is not because it has grown tired, but because I no longer need it to be violent. The drops are slower now, gentler. The sky exhales, and so do I.

I open my eyes to find the world rinsed into sharper color — the leaves greener, the pavement darker, the air tasting faintly of silver. My clothes are soaked, my skin cooled, my pulse steady.

And as I turn to go inside, the rain slips down my shoulders like a shedding — not an ending, but a release.

The skin of rain stays with me even as the clouds move on.