LET IT RAIN

Last night I awoke to a strange and surreal sound.

Rain.

I almost thought I was dreaming. So familiar a sound, and yet it had been almost six months since I had last heard drops hitting a roof, rain falling in erratic, slender sheets, puddles rapidly forming. Even the crackle of thunder had a familiar but foreign feel, as if it were not a memory but merely a remnant of one, dredged up from the basement of my subconscious.

Wonderful, to have the commonplace become mysterious and alluring.

The rainy season is about to begin, I guess, which is always ironic in Cambodia, because it happens to coincide with the hottest months of the year, April and May, months that scorch and slay any belligerent fool who opts to minimize what the merciless heat can and will do.

But last night, for a moment, hovering between the waking world and dreams-now-forgotten (though I wish I could remember, I do, I do) a modest form of majesty crept into my world, a natural cascade of water doing its rhythmic dance.

I fell in and out of sleep, waiting for the rain to stop, but it didn't, not until daybreak. Not until I'd been reminded of what had been lost for months on end and had now returned, unannounced, like a stray and forgotten pet finally finding its way home.