if the rains came that year the people would hide in their houses. little drops of water hitting them on the forehead while lying in bed at night. I would often sneak from the small bed containing not only me but my brother. better to feel the rain all over my body than only on my forehead like a medieval torture. oh, how the droplets would feel on my body, like the touch of a lover i wouldnt know for years. her caressing fingers kneading into my small frame. in the darkness, no one could see that i was not wearing any clothes. i would run from bush to bush like a small rabbit peering out to make sure no wolves lurked about. but there was never anything or anyone else in the night, only me and the secrets being told by the downpour. the heat of the summer night would steam the rain as it stopped in the early morn. I would climb into my window as the sun began to appear over the mountains in the east. my brother shuffling under the covers as I wormed my way back beside him. he would mumble something in his sleep and I would always laugh. I would wake later in the morning keeping to myself the secret of the night before. years later my brother would say that he was awake one night when i returned but never told our parents. why? he never told me a reason. he just looked at me with a look of longing, wishing he was brave enough then to do the same. when we both got older he became much braver than I could have ever been. he died in the war, in some country far away for some reason that none could remember as the years moved us along. the freedom he went looking for was the same freedom I found in the rainy nights of our youth. my love sometimes catches me looking out the window with the same longing expression of my brother. she comes behind me, reaching her arms around my waist and whispers a secret into my ear ‘the world is still there outside, in the rains of the night.’ i laugh, knowing that the rains of the summer darkness have never changed, only me.
