I remember the rain.

As I close my eyes right now and my fingers glide subconsciously over the keyboard, I recall dimly, that just a mere ten to fifteen minutes ago, I was truly somewhere else.

Somewhere terrible and dark.

The common sense in my head tells me that I will forget this, for dreams stored under my short term memory will fade in the next hour, and by the end of the day, this would have been nothing more than another victim in the cache of lost dreams.

But I refuse to forget this dream. Sure, I may look back at it in a few weeks or months, and think, “What an utter load of garble!”… But now, right now, I don’t remember feeling so happy in such a long while.

The memories are faint, and by the second, they pull away from me even more. I have to write this now…

I remember the rain. I remember the warmth of someone I wanted to touch and love so very much. I remember something else in him, a hesitation that I knew not how to get rid off. He would not touch me. It was as if I was unworthy, as if I did not understand what it meant to be with him.

I was hurt. How could I be so very unworthy? There were other people there, and I was with them. I was amongst the fortunate of society I remember. Snippets of cruel jibes aimed towards the shadows or lurkers of the slums were often and harsh.

Ah… now that I think about it, the rain was like that in the Matrix…

Except it was colder.

My dream fast forwards now… past an hour of living and longing. A journey that I did not choose to begin, but had begun nonetheless, and I would never be the same for it.

The Bridge.

I have to walk under it.

The boys on The Bridge are spitting on me. I feel their spittle in my hair and my back as I lower my head. I am numb to all of this, and I do not feel the shame that such an act should bring. But at the core of me, I feel the shock and the hurt that I have been reduced to this. Despite that, my longing and hope to find him keep me moving.

I am past that now… I still feel it dribbling down my back and my face in its slow painful procession of mockery. The mud reaches to my knees, and I see a black row of spikes hanging from the bridge. The only way I can go forward, is if I dive into the mud and go under the spikes.

It’s so dirty. It’s so dirty.
As I emerge out of the mud on the other side, I walk out into the rain.

Rain, pellets of water attacking me, like a constant judgment upon me. I stand there for a second as I feel the mud and the spittle slowly washing down my body. Two seconds pass.

A third. I know not how long I stand there in the rain. I hear a voice, and I turn around.

Up there, on a stone bridge structure, I see him. I run towards him with such fervor only those who love would understand. There are iron bars in between us, and at the mouth of this arch, I hold him.

I scream and ask a thousand questions at once as my hands reach through the prison-like bars and hold his soiled white shirt. I fall on my knees as he holds me back in a close embrace.

I cry and cry like never before. The chokes wrack through me as the pain and the sorrow catch up to me finally. He holds my head against his brave chest and I feel such happiness.

Such happiness.

Such intense happiness.

As he held me, I knew that I loved this man. He was one to always make me want to be a better person. And here I was, so battered and torn, and finally in his arms.

But I knew I would wake up. I sensed it in my mind, a knowledge that I would soon awake to a normal day, in my bed all alone, and he would be nothing more than a dream like the rest.

But my happiness… my love for this man… were they all so shallow? All a dream?

I vowed then, at the mouth of the stone arch, with the stone blocks under my knees as I knelt beside him with the bars between us, that I would not forget him. I would not.

Maybe he was or is true love.

Maybe he was God.

Maybe he was someone who showed me how much I had to give up to be truly happy.

Maybe he was me.

I don’t know, and an hour later, I still don’t. Change may come slowly, and I will change slowly. I think that if such happiness was at the end of this journey I’m on, how truly hard it may be, but how great the rewards at the end of the road.

I remember the rain. Bring it on.