When It Rains, I Remember That Evening

It begins, as memories often do,  
with the sound of rain on distant tin roofs  
and that strange scent of earth surrendering —  
a fragrance that awakens the silences we never buried,  
only misplaced  

between the folds of tomorrow’s conversations.  

That evening,  
when the streets glistened like forgotten mirrors,  
and twilight touched every leaf with something unspoken,  
we met — or perhaps two ghosts inside us did,  
pretending to wear our smiles.  

You spoke softly,  
as though words might fracture the delicate air between us.  
I looked away,  
counting raindrops like confessions  
that refused to reach the ground intact.  

We were together,  
yet loneliness sat between us  
like a third presence we never acknowledged.  
It listened,  
it inhaled every half-finished sentence  
and turned them into fog.  

How the world continued to move —  
the vendors closing shop,  
children chasing the scent of rain-drenched soil,  
dogs shaking off the sky’s tears —  
while we stayed frozen in the rhythm of what once was.  

***

There’s something about rain, isn’t there?  
It remembers where it has fallen before.  
It drifts through time like an old melody,  
returning only to test if the heart still hums along.  

And that evening proved it —  
that memory is water.  
It seeps  
even when you build walls  
and tell yourself  
you’ve dried the last drop of feeling.  

The café lights flickered on,  
each bulb reflecting a slightly different version of us —  
the way we should have smiled,  
the way we could have stayed,  
the way we didn’t.  

You traced invisible shapes on the table’s wooden grain,  
perhaps searching for the story underneath the surface.  
I watched your fingers,  
not your eyes,  
because the eyes had already begun  
to look someplace else,  
somewhere that did not rain.  

***

Time slipped,  
grain by grain,  
through our open palms.  
We didn’t even try to hold it.  
Perhaps we knew —  
nothing that fragile survives a fist.  

We were celebrants of endings,  
decorating our silence with laughter,  
pretending it was enough.  
Even the coffee cooled between us,  
its rising steam retreating  
like warmth leaving a body  
after the last kind word.  

Outside, someone hummed  
a tune that had no chorus.  
And I thought —  
maybe love is like that,  
a melody that forgets its refrain  
the longer you try to remember.  

***

Later, when the rain thickened  
and the city dissolved behind its silver curtain,  
we walked — side by side,  
each half a thought shy of touching the other.  

The umbrella was large enough,  
but the distance inside it  
was infinite.  

Every puddle held a reflection  
we dared not step in.  
Every streetlight bent  
like a candle tired of burning.  

Your silence poured heavier than the downpour,  
and mine had already drowned.  

***

Now, years later,  
when rain grazes the window  
with fragile, rhythmic hands,  
you return — not as a person,  
but as a texture in the air.  

I pause mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-life,  
and the evening rewinds:  
the same music,  
the same unspoken ache,  
the same sense  
that we once held joy and sorrow 
in unequal measure.  

You appear, always,  
between lightning and memory —  
a face the heart still sketches  
in secret ink.  

***

I no longer ask why memories choose rain  
as their messenger.  
Perhaps they, too, prefer  
to arrive quietly,  
to slip in unnoticed,  
and to leave everything glistening  
for just a while longer.  

The sky opens again —  
and the small droplets that kiss the ground  
whisper everything we could not say:  

that love is sometimes not lost,  
just unsaid;  
that absence  
is merely a language  
without sound.  

***

How easily we confuse “forever”  
with “for now.”  
We build promises like paper boats,  
and watch them drown halfway  
toward the horizon,  
calling it fate.  

But fate never writes —  
it erases  
and waits for us to make sense  
of what remains.  

That evening,  
the light dimmed just enough  
to make the air look tender.  
And tenderness — I’ve learned —  
is not the same as closeness.  

You can be inches away  
and still be galaxies apart.  

***

The moon rose late that night,  
bowing behind the soaked clouds.  
I imagine it watched us leaving —  
two shadows dissolving  
into the same direction,  
but never together.  

The sound of your footsteps  
was the last complete sentence  
I heard that night.  

***

Now, each monsoon  
becomes an unintentional summoning.  

When the first drops fall,  
I stop everything —  
the screen’s glow,  
the hum of deadlines,  
even the ticking clock seems  
to hesitate  
as if it knows your name.  

The past arrives uninvited but expected,  
wearing the same perfume of soil,  
the same drizzle-soaked symmetry  
of regret and wonder.  

***

I have walked through countless rains since then.  
They’ve changed,  
perhaps because I have.  
Their sound is more forgiving now,  
their touch gentler,  
like old letters that know  
they no longer need to be read aloud  
to be understood.  

Sometimes, when the world feels too dry,  
I step out without an umbrella,  
tilt my head back,  
and let the downpour translate  
what memory refuses to forget.  

***

If I listen carefully,  
beneath the layered rhythm of rain,  
I still hear the faint echo  
of that particular evening:  
the wet street,  
the unfinished coffee,  
the laughter that trembled  
like glass about to crack.  

And us —  
two silhouettes  
trying to celebrate a miracle  
that never arrived.  

We waited for time to stop,  
but time kept running —  
heedless, merciless,  
flowing through our palms  
as if it had somewhere more important to be.  

***

Now I understand:  
time doesn’t betray us.  
It merely reveals  
what won’t stay  
no matter how tightly we hold it.  

Love doesn’t vanish;  
it just changes hands —  
from presence  
to memory,  
from touch  
to echo,  
from rain  
to mist.  

And I —  
the same I who once stood  
beneath a dissolving sky  
pretending not to ache —  
have learned  
that grief, too, can be beautiful  
if you stop naming it.  

***

The night deepens.  
Rain still murmurs against glass.  
It speaks in the language  
we never mastered —  
a dialect of longing and release.  

Somewhere,  
you might be watching the same rain,  
in a different city,  
unaware that we share this silence again.  

If so, I hope you smile.  
I hope the raindrops  
don’t remind you of endings,  
but beginnings so fragile  
they could only survive as memory.  

***

Because now,  
when rain falls,  
I no longer mourn that evening.  
I honor it.  

It taught me  
that togetherness is not measured  
in presence,  
but in the echo it leaves.  

That even the loneliest meeting  
can become  
the most lasting connection,  
if memory chooses it so.  

So I let the rain fall tonight —  
let it rewrite what was left unsaid,  
let it reclaim  
every drop of silence between us.  

***

And somewhere,  
between the shimmer of then  
and the quiet of now,  
I whisper into the wet air:  

We were never meant to stay —  
only to remember. 

And the rain,  
soft as understanding,  
answers nothing,  
because nothing needs to be said.  

Only felt.  
Only remembered.  
Only carried —  
like water cupped in trembling hands,  
dripping gently through the fingers  
of time.