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Microstories

By John Edgar Wideman

Rain

Never ending rain had seemed the truth forever until the day he’d been born, and rain stopped the very next day and no rain since. No one he’d spoken to had much to say about rain. Nothing good to say. They were glad it was finished. Envied his freedom from what rain had imposed on their lives. Why was he so curious about something people assured him had been no fun. Worse than no fun. Some people would shake their heads to suggest he harbored an unhealthy obsession. Why this worrying after rain. If he had known rain, they said, if he’d been there, he’d shut up about rain, they warned or advised or teased or just turned away to end a conversation they could not stomach. None of them, not a single soul yet, understood his need to recover what he’d missed, rain falling for the final time the day he’d been born, the rain other people had forgotten or had no desire to recall, and him with a million questions, a million dreams, tears once when he couldn’t explain his yearning to the only person who had ever seemed really curious, but how could he describe to her something lost, and worse, lost irrevocably, before he had experienced it, how could he express his loss because what was rain, after all, what could he say except the next to nothing others had told him about rain that had never missed a day before he arrived and would start again, he was sure (and this might be the unbearable part), the instant he left.

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