Remove the tedious inevitable from your mind now
pitter 
patter 
drip drop 
crack rumble 
Dull.

This rain is not like that. 
This rain is sobbing 
hitting the pavement 
bullet wounds to the brain 
exploding 
seeming to leave tiny holes in the concrete
no thoughts erupting out to the surface 
only lights 
like smashed glass 
burning embers 
not falling animals but 
milk bottles that
shatter and spread into drains and gutters and shoes.

Many fight heaven's heartbreak
clutching their own vanity to their chests 
to retain its heat
shielding its eyes from the electric roots of the sky 
too afraid to succumb to its one and only request:
exist.
We all reach breaking point 
who we fall upon shows who we care for 
and the sky, she cared for me tonight. 

Her game of seduction 
making her way into every inch of my clothing 
making it heavy 
curling my hair into corkscrews  
dumped lazily in the kitchen drawer 
intertwined
hiding where one ends 
and another begins. 

To pull out paper would be a ridiculous thing, 
laughable in fact, 
to capture existence and forget my heart beats now. 
She would distort every letter 
making them swell and then crumble 
between my fingers
beautiful destruction
she forces the art of letting go at the time of arrival 
only temporarily placed in the palm of my hands.

I choose not to write

perhaps this needed holding a little longer 
than the time it takes for rain to eat words. 

thoughts.

After a few months of abandoned ideas and unfinished drafts, I turned to google in a moment of creative desperation and asked it for poetry prompts. After clicking a random link and scrolling I settled on the most mundane one I could find: write a poem about the rain. Having decided I could definitely manage this one at least, I ended up writing about embracing the moment and being thankful for the now – such is the creative mind’s way.

I have always really enjoyed rain as a metaphor for sadness, or any emotion, but also those things in life that penetrate deep into our core and force us to confront or just be. If you find yourself on a high street in the middle of a storm, I urge you to take a moment to look around you. I can guarantee you will find the screwed up faces of people desperately trying to save their make up with their coat collar or scurrying into bus stops and shop doorways as they fight what cannot be controlled around them. This is all providing that you are not too busy doing all of these things yourself. It is much rarer, and much more wonderful, to see a person strolling through the empty streets with their hood down and their face pointed towards the heavens. This is because we place importance on things that do not matter. I have done it too many times, and I am always more miserable when I arrive at a place only half drenched, because I failed to keep dry, rather than dripping from head to toe, because I chose to be. We only ever have control over our own reactions.

I couldn’t help but approach this idea from a more artistic perspective to resolve the poem. It reminded me of the feeling, you know the one, when you are enjoying something so much and you can’t help but use precious seconds by fishing around for your phone or playing with a camera. I did this once on holiday a few years ago; the sun was setting behind the Greek sea and the sky was a cocktail of colours, so naturally I reached for my phone and spent so long faffing with the settings that I not only didn’t get a picture, but I didn’t even see the sun set. Once we capture a moment into something physical, we place an expiration date on it. Photos can get lost and paper can deteriorate, but memories last a lifetime, and the very fact that the moment even happened, well that can never be erased. Besides, the sun will always rise and set, so there’s always tomorrow.

Before this becomes a sickening compilation of inspirational quotes, I will leave you with this – try it at some point. Take your time. Time is the only thing more important than love after all.