I truly do hate the rain. It’s all just one liquidly deaf orchestra, with Mother Nature conducting its players to stain the earth with its discordant tune. I suppose I was on the opposite end of the spectrum of the man who was sitting next to me at the bus stop, however, as he incessantly bobbed his head alongside the rhythm of this nightmarish ensemble of drizzling, as if the rain was solely there to lay a kiss upon his hand, begging for his approval. There was some haunting creature hibernating within the wrinkles of this man's face, but it slept in a way that made you want to sit closer to see if your skin was sugary enough to awaken it. From a more distant view, though, his dark-knitted hair whispered stories of a younger sky—one that seemed to evaporate up to mine, where his voice could navigate against the mist to reach out and revive me. Immersed in these clouds, we’d unleash each other, at last being attached to a heart that beats with the same palpitations of longevity. Glancing at the sky, I tried to shapeshift these clouds, cookie-cuttering their rounded puffs into our house and our fixed eyes, all of it floating into place. Deep within this graying weather, though, as clouds of a colder, more inflexible world, they’d have to remain. With the rain pounding, this man’s makeup morbidly melted down across his plaid suit and crooked posture. Still, there was some deathly green aura that lurked beyond the surface, one I could place right on my tongue and desperately savor like Summer’s fleeting syrupiness. Stepping into him, I became joyously forgetful.

Fiercely, though droplets raged on their wars, and through its gentle knocking on the bus stop windows, whatever daydreaming spirit was grazing the clouds came tumbling back into that fun-house reflection, that face that screamed of a horrifically unsymmetrical exhibit rather than human. In this painful meeting, I could only hear that shrunken me of the psyche, screaming about how acidic it was for such a face to enter any of the passing lives who encountered it—to make anyone look in.

Under his rusty hands, he was clutching onto something. I wonder if his hands had somehow, in some way, sculpted my skull. Descending into his eyes, I could feel him carving, undressing me down to an elegant form of his liking. Squinting within the storm, I struggled to make out a real soul who would have configured this face of mine. They had stitched the pieces so carelessly that it could not be done with any willingness, unless by some elderly hand fumbling with the needle as he frantically finished up the spool of thread in any design possible before birthing a final breath. So it was possibly a chisel that this man was holding onto, and if he just leaned out to caress my face, he could rearrange these facial fragments in their perfect places. What even is a face? How does it sound to others? Maybe in another rainfall, in another bloody wound of the maelstrom, this stranger and I would have our fingers intertwined. Maybe that’s why I hate rain so much. It pricks your skin with an injection of laughter that rolls down the arm, leaving the body viciously stung sober. And yet, again and again, I wanted to spin through it. Though this paradise poisoned me—this paradise which can make a stranger's hand seem so sweet.

On a day just as bleak as this, my mother took me to a consignment shop. Those dreamy ballet slippers any girl had pranced in for the years they could still laugh in rosy registers had supposedly become too afflicted with dirt and filth to keep turning. Though disheveled, they were mine, a piece of my childhood bloodline. There were eyes laid somewhere on this shoe that would blink back at you if you unrolled the ribbon far enough. Looking at the patches of dirt at a certain angle, some form of face would be staring back. But unable to extend its legs and mouth to escape or cry, it sat there with a dazed frown, whose wanted words could only be translated through its touch tingling into my childlike mind. In speaking to them, I heard how letting them leave this lap would hurt them, maybe even kill them. The entire time in that car, I tried to explain this shoe’s face to my mother, unable to sit comfortably in the image of deserting my friend on some rusted shelf as strangers walked by. Rushing past in drifting conversations, they’d be unaware of the little life weeping within this shoe. The person who’d find them wouldn’t understand the way my feet had inhabited them. They’d never understand all the things they weaved.

“They’re ugly”, she finally said to me. They’re ugly. 

Time had eventually lost me. Why was I here at this bus stop? What was I waiting for? Maybe I had subconsciously come for Him all along.

“Hey, I don’t think the buses are running anymore tonight. How bout you take a walk with me and we can head over to the train station?” the man entreated, offering his hand. Truth be told, this man held no gravity over me. He was a mere green kitchen, a wedding ring, a chest to throw all the pearls of life’s glass timeline into. But even though I didn’t want him, there was something so beautiful in the sense that his voice wanted me. For what was the Earth if not for the testosterone breath that keeps it spinning on its axis?

I thought about the old ballet shoes, sinking underneath the docile screams of decay. I looked back at my reflection at the bus stop. It was beautiful. I turned back up at the stranger, unsure as to where this hand would lead me.

“Sure, why not?”