Tennessee Rain

Have you ever been kissed so passionately your lips bruised?

That is how the rain falls in Tennessee

Wind flits the pale underside of leaves, whipping your hair into knots, rippling fabric across your chest, your legs, your back

The light changes, colors deepening, clouds thickening

Birds forget to chirp, forget to fly

And you can hardly breath from anticipation

Silence.

The world is holding its breath

And then it comes

That one wind like a wall of air, and if you turned around, arms raised like wings, you could fall back and be held up

Then fat, wet, glorious raindrops begin to fall

Thunder rupturing the clouds, lightening shattering fireworks of electricity across the sky

Rain falling harder and harder. Contact. Urgency. Exploding into masses larger than themselves.

Drenched.

I’m from the United States, Tennessee

But you’ve already figured that out.

I’ve been here seven months

And I was told that English weather is shit before I came.

Well, it’s not shit. But the rain is.

It rains here in accordance to this country’s mantra, “I can’t be bothered.”

Drizzle kinda falls, dispassionate, umbrella unnecessary

Tell me, have you ever kissed until your lips bruised?

Have you ever stood under the open sky as the Tennessee rain fell hard against your skin and thunder clashed through your bones and in a moment of abandon nothing but the wind held you up?

I have done that.

But I have never had my lips bruised by a kiss.

I have never had a boy hold me as close as raindrops sliding down my skin.

I have never had a boy light up my eyes as bright as lightning bleaching the world white.

I have never had a boy make me tremble like the faint, almost imagined, wind, teasing the loose strands of my hair in that small quiet before a storm.

And in those moments I wonder if I have found a passion in the Tennessee rain that I will never find in any human, any lover.

A teacher once told me, “Some people need fire to survive; others can live with content.” I always knew I was the former. But I have yet to find that fire in another, and sometimes I am tired of burning alone.

Walking home, walking to the store, walking to class, I look at every face passing by, trying to catch a reflection, a moment, a hint of…something. Searching for the face of a person who I have never met and who I do not even know what looks like.
Faces in shops. Faces in bus windows. Faces on sidewalks.
I don’t know who I’m looking for. But in truth, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know his name or his face or when we will meet. I just want to know that we won’t pass each other by.

But when it rains, I can’t see the faces. Umbrellas and hoods and ducked heads block my view. I stare at synthetic fabric and wet hair, and I want to scream, “Look at me!” Because maybe he is passing by, and I can’t see him because of this pathetic excuse of precipitation England calls rain.

If he is going to duck his head and if I am going to pass him by, then it will be in a rain that leaves our lips bruised, red and swollen. And the next day we will not be able to speak or smile or laugh without our lips aching and warm blood pulsing their fullness.

I have stood under the Tennessee rain, so I know God is a being of passion. So if I just trust him/her/whatever our pronouns are too small anyway, but if I just trust God, then I’ll find who I’m looking for.

Right?

I will find that fire that even the Tennessee rain can’t extinguish.

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