Blame it on the rain

Warning: This is streamofconsciousness without even the relief of hyphens to make for easy reading and understanding. Come into the parlour at your own peril.

I liked the call last night in the middle of all that pouring rain, inviting me to dinner and dance. Another age, I would've given my soul for just some invite like that. I liked it more that when I said pounding headache makes dancing improbable, you actually considered only dining. Those precious seconds when you tried to think things through and make a plan to suit me - may be it was worth everything thunderous that happened, all the blue funk that I am trying so hard to work upon and make readable.

And this day last year, there you were buying me amethysts and fixing the chain round my neck - a picture that remains in the files of a friend. A picture we all hoped would come to mean something when it was repeated. Strange none of us ever considered an if that evening. And a family dining together, wondering if the rain would ruin the evening (inclement weather - how I fear that phrase still), hopeful, full of good food, alcohol, and laughter. And the many trepidations we all hid from one another though we shared everything.

It was our family, don't you remember however foggily?

Our family that has stuck through all the thunderstorms. More people come together and huddle under its umbrella now when the world gets cold and wet; even if they don't all attend the many gay events (pun wholly unintended)- frequent drizzles of love and laughter. And you refuse to speak even after the storm has stilled. And the amethysts as the only hint of sunset go unworn on cleavage-revealing deep-purple tops that look like a rainy-day sky.

I brought you to this, even if you made me, another time it rained tears and hysteria. And knowing you walk in the rain alone now, without and away from the familial umbrella, how can I forgive myself?

So I blame it on the rain and I console myself saying they all come back. Even if you don't need them then. Even if then they are only a voice on the telephone you rather like but won't do anything about. And it rains then, just as it rained those years ago in—was it June or July?—and certainly the way it poured in September after everything.

It will rain. After Everything.

And may be the rain will melt one of us enough to meet for a dinner and a dance when the other calls. And the only thing we will each blame during that dinner will be the rain. And the amethysts you gave me will wink at you and remind you strangely of tear drops when we dance.

After Everything. In the rain.