The Sky

First a drip...

And then a drop...

And then a splutter...

And then shower...

And then a downpour...

We stared up at the sky,  the drops sliding down our faces, over our eye lids, around our noses, tracing the contours of our lips, before pooling at our chins and dropping down to the sparkling blades of grass below. She looked over at me, and smiled.

We both love the rain.

We sat inside, curled up on the couch, drinking tea and watching the rain fall from the sky, as if the house had been placed beneath waterfall, the torrent of cascading droplets never wavering or ceasing, cocooning us within our own world of water.

We were the only people on earth.

"I watch you sometimes," she said. "When we walk."

The smallest smile flowed over her visage, that sort of smile reserved for the loveliest little things, the one that appears once in a epoch, guarded preciously for only the most intimate moments when words fail to describe a feeling, a moment where only the smallest little smile can describe a whole universe.

"You're the only person I know,'' she continued, brushing her damp hair from her eyes, "that looks around when they walk. The first thing you do when you walk out of a building is look up."

Her eyes glistened with the rain as she looked at me.

"Why?"

It was my turn to smile.

"Because I don't want to miss out..." I trailed off, trying to find the words.

"We spend so much time looking down, looking at our phone screens, craning our necks anywhere and everywhere but upwards... There's a whole world above us."

She nodded, turning herself on the couch so that she could face me. She rested her head on her arm. Her chestnut hair seemed to foam around her.

"But it's more than that. There is such freedom in the sky. The sky," I said, emphasizing the word as it shimmered off my tongue, "is beholden to no one. It is subject to the whims of the universe, always changing, never static, never stuck in a moment. Embracing the sky is like embracing change, change which is as inevitable in life as death."

The rain was beginning to let up now. The world outside was in limbo, as if it didn't know whether it wanted to rain or shine, and it seemed to glow in that special way that it does only after a long rain, when the world is so dark and grey, coated in a thick, heavy veneer of swirling clouds, but simultaneously so bright. The ghost of a rainbow flickered in the distance beneath the voluptuous brume.

"Whenever I feel trapped, all I have to do is look up, and I'm free."