June Rain

Photo: Silvia C.

After several desperate days in the island-sauna, today the sky turned black, flashes of lightening lit up the darkest areas of the city, and, finally, the droplets of this much-delayed rain that we have been waiting for since May, fell.

Even when I was a child I liked very much to “see rain.” My mother told me that every drop, as it fell to the ground, was like a ballerina doing pirouettes. Perhaps it was that metaphor that made rain something almost mystical for me: it washed me, gave me peace, made me think of those things that an ordinary day under the sun doesn’t let me feel.

When July arrives it is so hot that my brain “fries” as if it were a computer hard drive; the power goes out, whether by a sadistic act or terrible chance the “Guiteras” thermoelectric plant, like every summer, has just begun a maintenance phase, adding to the blackouts; the fans stop; and just the smell that announces a downpour is capable of bringing me peace.