By Freda Dong

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The thoughts of a student on a rainy day.

it clinks clacks pit plat splats against your umbrella, muting the world in shades of gray, sending you afloat to an inner void. the melody trickles in your slowing thoughts, the beats and rhythms lulling you into a rare calm. you breathe in the fresh cold leaves and release the franticness, the suffocation from your repressed emotions and unspoken anxiety. catch a droplet on your tongue and taste the metallic acid and dust, letting it circulate throughout your body—

and then it suddenly starts pouring and thundering and you think oh no not this again. the wind roars as it pushes against you, threatening to blow you away, like a dandelion unable to keep itself together, and you lower your umbrella as if it’s a shield that can defend you against angry swords sent by the wind that cut into your skin. the chill seeps in and the puddles soaks your shoes, and you feel and hear the squish squish of your mushy wet socks, numbing your senses as you miserably trudge on in the storm 

until you reach the station, where you shake off and wrap up your umbrella and grimace as water falls on your soaked shoes. you wait for the train, watching drips from the ceiling onto the tracks, hoping it doesn’t cause another fire, until the train comes and you join a car filled with a sea of tired, groggy, wet people who do not want to go to work or school at 8am. you stand on the slippery floors because the seats are filled with water and other people are wet too and the entire car is a wet cat and you don’t want to get even wetter 

and the train runs and creaks and groans and pierce your ears as you wait for your stop, then you transfer and wait and get on the second train and repeat the cycle again

and midway on the stairs, you open up your umbrella once more and you step out of the station, the storm calmed into a drizzle. it always amazes you how the moment you look away things change, yet when you stare at something time tricks you into thinking it remains stagnant, like seeing the sun setting, or the stars moving when it’s actually the Earth rotating, or the tides changing, or the clock ticking, ticking, ticking, 

ticking,

ticking like the rhythm of your thoughts, always subtly moving, a never-ending constant on the inside, as you exist through your days disconnected from the world, except when the rain comes and forces you to feel—

so you surrender and offer your palm to the gods, to the dragons swimming in the cloudy skies above, and they bless you with a soft droplet in your hand. you close your umbrella once more and walk in the mist, the drizzle slowly coating your jacket into a slightly heavier, darker shade

as you amble and feel and smell the petrichor and the rain, soaking in the tranquility even in your wet socks until you finally reach your destination, ready to start another day.

Process

This piece started as a free write during one of my pair sessions with my mentor, Jen, on a day where I felt a little creatively burnt out. It was a cloudy day, so I put on some ambient rain music in the background and wrote down all the sensory details of the rain and how it made me feel, as an exercise in descriptive writing. A few weeks later, Jen and I came back to expand the poem, adding a narrative and additional details, making sure the piece flows and has a consistent tone. This piece was an experiment in prose poetry, a genre that I’ve been delving into at the start of my senior year, as I try to write more pieces that contain streams of consciousness while keeping the imagery of poetry. I also tried to connect the external sensations the narrator of the poem feels with their inner monologue, flowing seamlessly between the two as they continue their commute on a rainy day.