The Rain Only Remembers

It started here.

Standing here.

Only this time, something is different.

The rain hits hard, a thousand cold hands on my skin. It drowns out breath, thought, and sound. The streetlights flicker, blurred into golden smudges by the downpour. The pavement gleams, black and bottomless, swallowing the city in its reflection.

And he is standing there.

Like before.

The rain slips down his face, carving paths over his cheekbones, his lips. It looks like he’s crying. But I don’t think he is. I don’t think he ever has.

I want to speak, but the words lodge in my throat like stones. My fingers twitch at my sides. I should move. I should run. I should do something. But I don’t. I can’t.

Because I remember.

The first time the rain felt alive, it was the night I met him.

The sky had split open like something had torn it from the inside out. I ducked beneath an awning, heart hammering from the sudden storm. My shoes were soaked through. The cold had crept into my bones. I watched my breath rise in sharp white puffs.

And then—he was there.

He emerged from the rain as if it had created him, as if the storm had shaped itself into a man long enough for me to see.

Not rushing. Not running for cover. Walking through the storm like it was nothing, like it belonged to him.

I remember staring, my breath hitching in my throat. The rain should have soaked him. It should have left his clothes clinging to his skin, his hair dripping in uneven strands. But it didn’t.

The water flowed over him like sentient fingers, tracing paths but never holding on.

I felt something then—a shift in the air, a static weight pressing against my ribs, a certainty that I shouldn’t be seeing this.

“You should come stand under here,” I said, raising my voice over the wind. “You’ll get sick.”

He stopped in the middle of the street and tilted his head back, eyes fluttering shut.

“No,” he murmured, lips parting. “It’s been waiting for me.”

A tremor ran through me. Not from cold.

I should have known then; I should have left.

But I didn’t.

I loved him before I understood what he was. Before I realized the sky never stayed clear when we were together. Before I noticed how he was always strongest, always most alive when the rain was falling. Before I knew, our best moments only happened when the clouds broke. The dizzy, reckless nights running through empty streets. The kisses with water streaming down our faces. The soft confessions murmured into the hush of a storm.

Never in the sunlight.

Never when the air was still.

Only when the rain claimed him.

I should have asked questions. But I was in love, and love makes fools of us all.

The first time I woke up without him, the city was drowning.

The windows shuddered in their frames. Thunder cracked the sky open like a wound. I sat up in bed, breath shallow, something wrong, wrong, wrong.

And then I saw him.

Outside.

Standing barefoot in the street, face lifted to the sky, his silhouette blurred by the sheets of rain.

For a moment, I just watched.

The wind howled through the alleyways, rattling signs, throwing debris into the streets. But he didn’t flinch. The water streamed down his skin, and for the first time, I noticed—he wasn’t wet. Not really. Not the way I was.

My stomach twisted. I swung the door open, stepping onto the sidewalk. The rain hit me like a wall, drenching me instantly.

“Come inside!” I shouted over the wind. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t move. He didn’t even look at me at first.

And then—he did.

I ran to him. I don’t know what I was expecting. An explanation? A reason? But when I reached for his arm—I didn’t feel skin.

I felt water.

Slick, cold, and shifting under my fingertips.

I gasped, jerking my hand back. My pulse roared in my ears.

For a moment, his outline wavered. His body shattered, turning into a clear, shifting form that fought to stay intact.

“What’s happening to you?” I whispered.

His gaze met mine, and my stomach dropped. Because he wasn’t afraid.

“I can’t stay,” he said in a gentle tone.

“Then take me with you.”

He smiled, sad and knowing. “Not yet.”

And then—

He was gone.

Not walked away. Not disappeared into the fog. Gone.

Like he had never been real at all.

I told myself I imagined it. That grief plays tricks on us, that love can feel like something supernatural when it ends too soon.

I almost believed it.

Until tonight.

I stood in this exact spot again, with the rain pouring. And there he was, like he never left.

My breath stutters.

“You came back,” I whispered.

A beat of silence. His eyes glisten. Not with tears, but with streetlight reflections, rippling like water.

“Did I ever leave?”

A gust of wind stirs the downpour. And for a second—his body flickers.

It ripples like a reflection in disturbed water. There, then broken, then something less than whole.

Then he reforms. Whole again.

I step back. Because I understand now. I understand what he is.

“I remember you,” I whisper, my voice almost drowned out by the storm. “But I don’t know if it’s because I want to. Or because the rain makes me.”

He moves closer. The space between us vanishes.

“Does it matter?” he murmurs.

He lifts his hand—touches my cheek. And oh—the touch is real. Warm, solid, human.

But for how long?

I exhale. The rain slides over my skin like a mouth, like a promise, like something I can never take back.

I look at him one last time.

And then—

The storm takes us.

When the rain finally begins to slow, the city is empty.

The pavement glistens, black and slick. The streetlights flicker, humming in the silence.

And somewhere, in the rain, two figures remain. They stand exactly where they always have.

Or maybe just one.

Or maybe none at all.

The rain does not say.

The rain only remembers.