I Can Smell the Rain

 I Can Smell the Rain

and there’s a storm comin’

These past few days I been thinking back on something that we’d say back home anytime a storm was coming—“ooo, I smell the rain coming.” It’s a simple turn of phrase: a comforting colloquialism that me and my mama and her mama and her mama and I’m sure her mama, too, have all used. 

Rain smells good. At least to me. It’s crispy but not like an autumn day, no, and distinctly chilly in the same way. It’s not sweet, not sour, and not something adjacent to taste. Weirdly, it doesn’t taste like it smells. Maybe because you can only taste one raindrop at a time. 

    And for those of us who couldn’t smell the rain, we could feel it coming deep in our joints and between our vertebrae, especially in those places we hurt, sprained, broke, and dislocated long ago. You didn’t have to see the clouds outside to know the approaching storm; you could feel it with every part in you.

 

    Smelling the rain may seem prophetic (maybe something like a shining), but it’s not. It’s deductive. There’s a real sensitivity to atmosphere and mode. Some of it is intuitive, but not all of it, no. That sensitivity is learned. Learned from the lessons of other suns. And as the pressure drops and the air gets still, that comin’ storm will proceed you, and make you remember that pain. Anticipate what’s to come. That storm. You see where I’m going?

    I’ve been smelling the rain, lately. Even on the sunniest of days. And even when things are alright. I’ve been feeling the storm comin’—down my neck and on my shoulders. And I can tell a lot of people don’t smell it. 

    

    And they walk like it, too! Like they never had pain before. No memory of hurt. Not a hint of it. You’d think they’re immortal. But they’re flesh like me, despite what they want to believe. No, they don’t smell the rain. They don’t.

    I smell the rain, and I don’t know what it will bring. Can you smell the rain, and maybe tell me what it means?