There was a pause in the rain.
Not a drizzle. Not that reluctant tapering off when a storm seems unable to decide whether it has finished. The rain simply stopped.
We thought it was over.
The clouds were still there, bruised and heavy, but somewhere beyond them the light had begun pushing through. Water slipped from the leaves in slow, fat drops. Gutters gurgled through the last of what they had collected. The world seemed to be settling itself.
Then the wind shifted.
It wasn’t much. Just enough to turn the leaves over and expose their pale undersides.
The birds disappeared.
A squirrel that had been sitting on the fence suddenly dropped into the yard and vanished beneath the shed. Somewhere nearby, the insects went quiet.
Apparently, everyone had received the memo except us.
Then I heard it.
Splat.
A drop struck the pavement.
Splat. Splat.
Another hit the railing.
For a few seconds, they came individually, enormous drops falling far enough apart that each announced itself.
Then the sky opened.
Rain hammered the pavement, the roof, the leaves, the cars parked along the street. Thousands of drops struck the hot ground at once, and the whole neighborhood began to hiss.
It sounded like bacon frying.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically.
Bacon.
A skillet full of it.
The kind of sound that makes you think of Sunday morning and grease popping against the stove while somebody stands too close despite knowing better.
Except there was no kitchen.
Just rain.
And then, because apparently the weather hadn’t finished showing off, the sun came out.
Not gradually.
One moment everything was gray, and the next sunlight broke through the clouds and spilled across the wet pavement. The trees glittered. Water running along the curb flashed silver. Every raindrop seemed briefly suspended in gold before disappearing against the ground.
But the sizzling continued.
I stood there listening to rain fall beneath a shining sun, watching steam curl from pavement that hadn’t yet surrendered its heat.
Nothing about it seemed particularly concerned with making sense.
Maybe that was why I kept watching.
We like clean transitions. Storm, then calm. Darkness, then light. Beginning, middle, end. We put periods where we think they belong and become irritated when the world keeps writing.
But the birds had known.
The squirrel had known.
Maybe even the trees, turning their leaves toward whatever was coming, had known.
We were the only ones foolish enough to mistake silence for certainty.
The rain eventually stopped again.
This time I didn’t declare it finished.
I just listened.
For a while, the gutters dripped. Steam lifted from the pavement. Somewhere in the trees, one bird finally tested the silence with a single note.
Then another answered.
The sun remained.
And somewhere beneath all that brightness, the earth was still warm enough to hiss.
We had mistaken the pause for the ending.
Memoirs of Madness 