Rain days (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

enter rain

And we sat on the porch and chattered into the late afternoon,
bubbly from the run, perhaps, or whatever freedom the summer
had gifted us, the sound on the roof like a permission slip, a tiptoe tune
of ease. I realized how much weight we carry, how we clamber
through our lives heavy as old rock. It’s not our bodies that do it, but the layers
we cloak them with, doubting our own instinct for happiness. I wondered
if, in fact, age could be a molting if I let it, a sloughing off of skepticism, tears
in the stiff fabric of my own mind. The drops intensified, and I surrendered
to a riotous music, and we sat in silence for a while, both attentive and serene.
It’s impossible, of course, to start completely over, but still I felt washed clean.

~Maya Stein