Rain, Ribs, and Asphalt

There’s the rain that sweeps in alongside a gust of wind, your fingers struggling to find grip on the hood of your jacket as you shove against the resistance of the very air you’re stepping out into. The wind is cold and it rolls through you, ripping through the layers of cloth and flesh that protect your skeleton, stealing the air from your lungs, harnessing your breath for its own power as it sprints across the bay. Every sigh, every exhalation of words that you throw into the air—the wind whisks it away. In exchange for your breath, the wind gives you rain: thin, insignificant droplets that would otherwise feel like nothing, but in the gusts of air they slice your skin like thousands of tiny needles. You’re left to squint, helpless, at the mercy of the storm.

            Sometimes we battle the rain like it’s our enemy, shielding our faces with our hoods or hiding beneath an umbrella, but other times the ceaseless downpour is something to embrace like an old friend. Sometimes it draws us from our homes, persistent, and the sound of it peppering the pavement is like the echo of a voice: You’re only going to be young once! Sometimes the rain leaks into our eyes, staining them grey and purple and green like the light of a summer’s nostalgic eve. Sometimes it soaks us—to the bone, they say—until we can feel it collecting in the crevices of our ribs where the sun never shines, left to become a cesspool of pollution and shame, like iridescent puddles on the asphalt.

            They say the rain is cleansing. Sometimes it is. Other times it makes you realize how filthy you really are, exposing the discomfort congealed beneath your untrimmed fingernails, the broken promises caught between your teeth because you never floss. It flattens your hair to your scalp and makes your clothes cling to your crooked form. It reveals your true shape.

            But rain can conceal, too; to cry in the rain is to do so without the world able to distinguish tears from raindrops. Rain can muffle sounds—footsteps, traffic, the gentle snoring of your brother down the hall. It bathes the world in a fresh, earthy scent that replaces the musty stench of yesterday.

I like to think it can wash away memories, in the same way that an overflowing stream sweeps trees from where they’re rooted so precariously in the soil of the bank. I like to think that the rain can soak up all of the pain, all of the fear and confusion and frustration that’s coiled up inside of you, just as the gust of a windstorm steals words from your tongue. I like to think that the rain is merciful and brutal. That it takes just enough to make it seem like it’s giving.

            I still remember the night I left everything, and everyone, behind. They slept so peacefully while I sped down the I-5 with rain in my eyes, the blinding glow of a pickup truck’s headlights in my rearview a jarring comfort in the darkness of the midnight asphalt. In some kind of self-destructive mania, I listened to the entirety of Pure Heroine by Lorde and sobbed against the storm swimming through the open window, cheeks painted with the grief of a bygone youth.

            It was a strange relief when the truck finally pulled into the left lane and sped past me, gaining on the horizon, cherry brake lights disappearing into the night. It was a strange relief when it was just me and the rain and the asphalt, my vision too blurry to read the speedometer, my limbs too numb from the cold to loosen my grip.

            I’ve never felt more alone. The voice emanated from the speakers and echoed in my ears, louder than the roar of my tires on the road. It feels so scary, getting old.

            I felt like it was speaking to me, as me, eighteen and speeding down a familiar highway to an unfamiliar destination. I’d known everything was supposed to change, but I hadn’t realized until that moment that everything had changed. It didn’t matter how much I wanted it back—my youth, as an experience rather than a memory—because I would never have it back. I felt wasted, years of my life tossed to the rain outside my window as my car barreled down the interstate, reeling through the midnight streets, my sense of self disappearing with every gallon of gas that burned and polluted the air.

The rain was taking, taking, taking. Sweeping me away and pouring me into cracks in the pavement, potholes in the asphalt, until all that was left in the driver’s seat was a skinny, rain-soaked skeleton. An empty cup waiting to be filled with something new. Something different.

            I hadn’t even said goodbye. To my parents, maybe, but not to the people I wanted, needed, to say goodbye to. I had smiled and waved at them, the same way I always had, as if I was going to see them again in a matter of days. I didn’t know the only time we’d ever acknowledge each other’s existence again was in half-hearted birthday messages and lazy Instagram hearts.

            And I would come back as years passed me by, stretching desperately towards a time that had whirred past like a speeding truck on the rain-smeared interstate. No matter how fast I went, it would never again be within my reach. It would never be enough. Visiting would forever make me feel like I was a stranger in a foreign city. I would never speak the language, as much as I longed to. The rain had washed that fluency away, along with any impression of memory that I heard in the rhythm of my racing heart and the raspy echo of the voice in my speakers.

            I like to think of the rain’s persistence in that moment as symbolic, of its war against my windshield wipers as a constant struggle between clarity and obscurity. Between the past and the present. Between lost friends and found family. My open windows were an invitation, the rain seeping, mixing in the fragile fluidity of my ribs, staining the corners of my memory with the hazy taste of a midnight sky. The galaxy beyond the atmosphere was hidden by a layer of clouds, but I saw stars in the condensation of my breath.

I haven’t seen those stars since. Much like the constellations of our Milky Way, they look different each time they appear. They change as the universe expands, trapped in a moment of time which no longer exists, moving farther and farther away until, in a lackluster culmination of inevitability, they disappear completely.