Unmasked by Rain

Unmasked by Rain

The storm came down the narrow street, soft-footed, oddly sweet;

It tapped on every shuttered thought and pooled around my feet.

The shopfronts blurred like half-posed lies behind a fogged-up glass.

And all the selves I’d tried to be went drifting with the past.

My coat was built for smaller clouds, for drizzle, not for grief;

This sky had read my weathered file and come to bring relief.

The first cold drop slipped down my neck the way a truth slips in.

Then others followed, urgent, loud, like friends who won’t pretend.

Mascara ran its honest route, no patience for the brim,

A black confession down my cheek, I didn’t hide from him.

Your umbrella hovered uselessly, held between retreat and stay.

I let the water take my face and rinse the masks away.

You’d met the practiced party smile, the nod that kept you far,

the “I’m okay” with polished teeth, the carefully parked car.

But here, with hair in soaked defeat and shoes that squeaked of pain,

The person you’d been asking for stepped forward through the rain.

No perfect angle left to keep, no filter, gloss, or pose,

just trembling breath and laughter that broke open at the nose.

The sky forgot its distance, love; it fell and split in two.

And in that silver avalanche, I finally told you true.

We stood there, drenched, the traffic hissed, the gutters overflowed.

The world kept scrolling round us in its bright, indifferent mode.

Yet something small and shockingly alive refused to feign—

two hands that fit more honestly, at last unmasked by rain.