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I love rainfall. It’s magical; the sound of the water, the feeling that I have fallen into the color blue. It’s loud. And yet, every time it rains, it seems the night has become silent to hear my brain at work. When it rains, when the wind throws the curtains back, and the drops slap against the fountain in the courtyard, it’s as if the clouds pick me up and transport me to another world. Suddenly, it’s midnight. The air is charcoal black. We are in some deserted alley in India. I’m dancing in the rain. You are watching. You are watching the way my wet hair falls against my cheek. The way I’m smiling. The way my teeth break the darkness for a moment. You don’t want me to stop, but you want me to sit next to you. You want to rest your head in my lap. You want us to spend the night like that, soaked in an alley way.

I’m still dancing. You don’t know if you will ever lay your head in my lap. You think about the scene in slumdog millionaire, when a boy and girl meet in a cave, and go on to fall in love when they’re older. You are wishing that we were little kids. That it was raining and you sought refuge in this cave; that you saw me and asked me to join you. You wish we were in that cave, learning each other’s names for the first time, listening to the rain whistle outside as each droplet bounced off the roof.