Rain

         She had lost her childish delight in the rain.  The realization hit her as she drove home, water pouring down from the sky, obscuring the windshield.  She couldn't figure out where she had left the desire to stand for long minutes, face upturned and arms spread in supplication to the deities of water and sky.  The need was gone, like misplaced car keys, or an abandoned once favorite toy.  Every year she could remember dark, heavy clouds had brought out her frivolous side.  It worried her that this year was different. 

         She pulled up to her apartment complex and paused a moment with the engine off.  Listening to the soothing tattoo of the drops beating themselves against the roof of her rusted VW Rabbit, she wondered what had happened.  Finding no answers in that rhythm she gathered up her things and prepared to make the mad dash through the weather and up the stairs to her door. 
         
         She could remember the first thunder storm of the winter when she was ten.  She had woken up that morning with the smell filling her.  The heavy clouds hung in the sky and she felt like they followed her to school.  Everything broke on the playground.  A few fat drops and then the sky rumbled and fell.  Everyone had run for shelter, shrieking and laughing as the teachers herding them with flustered, fluttering arms.  She had stood entranced in the center of the four square court.  They had to physically drag her indoors because she could not move herself. 
         
         And every year the same litany, first from parents, then friends and lovers. Put on your raincoat.  Take this umbrella.  Why do I buy you rubber boots if you refuse to wear them?  You know you will catch your death out there. You are most definitely not coming into this house in those clothes. She hadn't worn the rain coat, or carried an umbrella.  She detested rubber boots and preferring flip flops.  Inexplicably she had also never had a single illness after one of her many jaunts into foul weather.  A warm shower and hot tea seemed all the prevention she needed to hold the coughs and sniffles away.  She had sopped it up like a thirsty sponge every year-- until this one.

         On her doorstep it blossomed outward like a giant black flower.  She adjusted the strap of her computer case, then brought the umbrella over hear head as she stepped out into the rain.