The dark season has arrived. Where I live it rains, a lot, in fact our winters are just monthes and monthes of rain. The air changes, the earth exudes a dampness, and suddenly I wake up to a spectrum of grey instead of the summer sun.
Many people suffer depression in this period, we all seem insular withdrawing all warmth to our core. Even the architecture seems to change, moving activity inside - behind closed blinds, sealed windows; patios are abandoned, porches left dark.
But, I have learnt to love the rain. It provides a mask for those risks you took in the light, a veil that covers the stumbles and rejections of summer's romances. Its floods quench our parched bodies and surge new hopes in our hot beating hearts.
This should be the true season of romance.
We are all exposed in our humanity, we sniffle and scurry, we lose our stilhettos and tans, and we are simplified. The romance of rain comes in drizzles, we shelter one another, feel damp together, and form community under the eaves. It is a romance of modesty.
The rain sliding down my window is almost sensual. I find increased confidence in this darkness, while in summer I timidly stepped out, like a fawn, and found my new legs, in the misty veil of winter I feel powerful and ambitious.
I become the dark lady, the intensity of femininity, I romance the rain.
