Don't Cry Sister...

It rained cats and dogs and every other animal rainable this morning.
I woke up at 7 am to the sound of thundering and roaring answered with echoes of sudden light that teased my sleep trodden eyes. The rain hammered against the balcony tiles and the roof of the building right above my head so methodically that I got lost in its thread of meteorolgical harmony.
The last time it rained like that I was still in London. It was February or March of this year. Still quite cold in London, and I was at home alone. My housemates were each out going about their lives, while I hovered from room to room going about mine. My laptop was playing music through the speakers we had gotten as a hush-gift from a friend who had had a little (and by a little I of course mean ridiculous amounts) too much to drink and had managed to act inappropriatly at our houseparty (this included running off with an unopened bottle of vodka that nearly 10 other people could have benefited from the contents of.) As I attempted to clear my room, I tripped over one of the boxes I had shipped from beirut. It was sitting in my room, still un-emptied, and now just waiting to be shipped back in a few months.

Out fell a deck of cards wrapped in a hairband.

And suddenly I heard it. A girl cry.
It started with low breaths and sniffing and escalated quickly to terrible gasps and cries and wails.
As I heard her, my skin crawled with the emotion that filtered throughout my room. Her pain was of depths unfathomable and unexplainable. I saw her grasp at her throat unable to control this flood that broke through a dam so well preserved before, scared at this foreign phenomenon that gripped her.
It went on for what seemed ages. She wailed and cried and sobbed and lamented and everytime I thought to myself "She must be getting tired. She has to be getting tired...", she went on for longer and longer...

Hearing her began to exhaust me. I felt like a caged animal, moving from side to side, scared, alone, hearing this sister in arms pour out ungovernable sentiments, her body shaking and vibrating with her shuddering breaths in the hollow of my ribs, her tears splashing slightly on to my arms that held hands caressing fingers.

And then, thirty minutes of non stop sorrowful crescendos and diminuendos later, she stopped. Suddenly. Just as suddenly as she had begun.


I slept exhausted of fatigue, on a damp warm pillow, sinking into a battered mattress.