The Weight of Water

There is a specific silence that follows a heavy rain, the kind that settles into the marrow of a city after the frantic drumming against the tin roofs has finally ceased. I think of the way my father used to stand on the porch, watching the gutters overflow, his hands tucked deep into pockets that held nothing but lint and the ghost of a house key to a home that was demolished years ago. He wasn’t looking at the water; he was looking at the space where the garden used to be, before the concrete took its place. We spend so much of our lives trying to keep dry, trying to preserve the edges of our own boundaries, forgetting that we are mostly made of the very thing that threatens to wash us away. What happens to the joy that is felt in the middle of a deluge, when the world is blurred and the sky is falling? Does it evaporate with the puddles, or does it soak into the earth, waiting for the next season to bloom?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this fleeting surrender in her image titled Rain-Soaked. She reminds us that even in the densest urban sprawl, there is room for a heart to open itself to the storm. Does the rain wash away our burdens, or does it simply make them heavy enough to finally set down?