you call her rain, I call her sweetheart

Weather forecasts had called for rain all week, and every time it had begun to fall, I had been in a previous engagement and unable to enjoy it.

I court the rain and pine for her sweet caress.  I had longed to go dancing, to feel her cool drops upon my face and hands.  Days ticked by through the week, and when she came calling, I had committed myself elsewhere.

Last night I made time for her, and we took a walk.  I stepped outdoors and I heard her strained tears of neglect.  I knelt and apologized.  She seemed nonplussed, she ignored me and turned her beautiful face away.  I looked up to see the dark strands of her hair covering the sky, her back to me, looking away.  She couldn’t bear to look at me.  I didn’t know what to say to her.

So we walked for a while.  I played us some music.  I walked slowly, and then slower still.  My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the clouds above – she was closed off, cold to the touch.  I saw a seamless dark mass and depths above me.  I asked her a few stupid questions.  I wasn’t being myself.  I should know her better than this, I shouldn’t be asking anything.  I felt distracted by my wanting of her, as few and fewer still sharp drops fell from above.  I couldn’t see past through my desires to her needs.

I couldn’t see a path through her thicket, I couldn’t come to an accord, couldn’t make sense of her in that night, and so I wandered.  As I walked and let myself wander, I found some thoughts wander too; first alongside with me, and her, but then, within me.  Some ideas came in.  Sometimes I think I ought to tear off and tear down all the doors of this world so that strangers would more likely come as they please.  I think we need that openness in a most dire and desperate way.

Look at the word, possession.  To own, or to be owned.  The concept of ownership.  In a bad relationship, we’re said to be too possessive.  In a horror film, we’re possessed, we’re entered by force, our soul and free will is taken advantage of, raped, owned.  But we are a people of ownership, it’s our culture.  What hypocrisy.  Possession is 9/10ths of the law and all that.  We buy, we sell, we trade, we own, we disown, we recycle into more things we can own later on.

But look at that.  When we speak of our possessions, we talk about the trinkets we surround ourselves with, our ornamentation.

And it occured to me, that’s not how I define possession at all, not in my heart, not as I’ve *ever* seen it.  I see it as a cooperation between the tool and the wood to be carved.  I see symbiosis.  I see a sense of entering, moving through, but not by force – by acceptance.  Acceptance of the change to come, of the changes to come within us through this new relationship with our possessors.  I see a friendship, a love, a partnership and a companionship.

The rain was strangled tonight, coming down not gently, but slowly.  She felt strangled, restricted.  She still amazes me, and she’s beautiful even when she’s furious with me.  I felt like I was headed the right way, so I contined my aimless walk, I tried to let her into me, tried to find a way into her.  My feet crunched off the empty streets and onto a gravel path.  I moved into the darkness, away from the street lights, letting my feet find the way through the trees, listening for the crunch of shaved rock and mud.

After a while, I came to a stop.  There was a small pond, a little oasis in the darkness.  A field mouse ran across the path and over my foot.  I watched the rain sprinkle onto the pond.  I looked up at the clouds.  Still dark.

I looked around to see long, endless rows of tightly packed houses.  It seemed so odd to find this little pond here.  The idea hit again.

Possession, I’m still coming back to this.  We’re packed shoulder to shoulder.  Melancholy faces in the lonely crowd.  We don’t wander like I am tonight.  We elbow, we push, we battle for our personal space.  We need that space, we can’t have it possessed by others, we can’t give up ground and territory.  Our sense of self and soul is usually hanging on by a fucking thread anyways – who knows how much more punishment and mishandling it can bear, right?  To be possessed is to sacrifice, and while we are definitely a people of ownership, we are not a people of sacrifice, not in a spiritual, psychic way.

But it then occurs to me that I’m doing the same, I’m here in the darkness, 2 AM, heart heavy, not a soul outside or outside of their beds.  I’m taking the whole world’s personal space, I’m roaming their streets below as they sleep safely in their trees.  And I get it.  She needs her space too, and I’m out here roaming around.  She doesn’t mind me here, she just wants the companionship while we enjoy our space out here.  I’m so stupid.  I apologize so softly, I gather her into my arms.

And the clouds come in, and the rain comes down, and she comes down on me in sheets like a hyperventilative sigh of relief and exasperation.  And for the space of that oasis, I feel very, very claustrophobic.  And I sit down and I cry with her.  I raise my arms up, and she rains on me, and she cries on my shoulder too.  I apologize again for putting her off, and I pray deeply to my goddess, for my goddess, that she might endure and continue to bless and favour my heart with her love.

I apologize for not seeing her earlier, not seeing that she had no place to come down, no space for herself, elbow to elbow with the expectations of the world.  We have no place for the rain anymore, we blame her for ruining our plans, we don’t thank her for nurturing our crops and washing our sins away.  I say a prayer for her, and I let myself go, I let myself be hers for a while, give her a little space to play and dance and sit with me.  I make a little room, for her.

So elbow to elbow with the rest of this crowded world, we found a little space *in* each other.  She possessed me, entered through my skin with her downpour, in my eyes, down my neck.  There is no better lover than the kiss of the rain, she wants only to touch you and rest upon your skin.  She makes me feel inept and selfish.  Someday, while I wander through her again, I’ll find a way to kiss back.

When she was all cryed out, and I heard her percussion upon the pond no longer, I ran home to meet her in my dreams.

~ Driz

~ by drizitche on July 3, 2009.