The 3^rd

Cold Shower

In the hardest of rainfalls;

It was dark.

It was cold.

It was harsh, and loud, and blinding.

It was, above all, lonely.

It was everything that was ever bad about the hardest of rainfalls, except that I remembered you. And how it is that thunder calms you.

And I felt like I could weather through, somehow. I felt like I could feel your hands in mine.

And I could.

******

Well, that was a crazy week.

It largely had to do with the fact that Chinese New Year couldn’t be happening anytime sooner, and to make sure we get the magazine out in time, magazine-closing happened earlier. Way earlier. And if you ever see me out on the streets, mumbling and glaring and generally being bitter about Chinese New Year – all that red and pomp and those insanely, painfully saccharine songs - you’ll know that this would be one of the reasons.

I don’t think Chinese New Year hate ever hung so low and dark over the office, or at anywhere for that matter, even if nobody said a word or complained. We’d walk and bustled, and the hate would brush our hair and tickle our ear and muddle our minds with thoughts of massacre and suicide with Dettol.

For that week, every evening, it rained. And the rains then were heavy and harsh.

It would’ve been forlorn. Or depressing. Or lonely, because there had been days like these in the previous year, and they had all been lonely days.

But it wasn’t this time. Because of the Words and Songs and Being There.

Because, in one way, there was an Angel. And I was bestowed with the above.

It kept me going, even after I’ve gone through.

And I go a little further still.