Rain Man

The man I speak of walks with a limp, one leg slightly longer than the other. The type whose laces extend out from the bowknot precisely the same amount on either shoe. On rainy days he leaves the front door of the tenement building with a smile on his face. The sun is too much for him. He’s friendly with clouds, but most of all he likes the rain. While others run from it he paces, in measurements, splashing his shoes into the puddles in the wells of the concrete. He glories in it. He is a man who has never loved. It is a language he cannot use, cannot speak a word of and cannot understand. Never looked into the eyes of another and felt unsafe. Only been made to feel unsafe by eyes that would not love him. His is not a man but a boy. A boy whose heart the world breaks every single day. Except for days like these. The days of rain are gifts, days for splashing through, for arching back one's neck to meet the rain face-on, to taste it on one's tongue and listen to its falling. The sound of rain falling to fill the hole that love left empty as an echo.