The rain is coming. I can feel it. The sky is growing darker at ten-fifteen in the morning, and the wind is blowing the sweet scent of humidity as I pace across my front lawn. The grass is cool beneath my bare summer feet, calloused from all of those days running around the track at the high school with no shoes on just because it was summer and I could.

Sure enough, the world lights up for a split second, as if God has flicked on and off the Heavenly light switch, and the whole earth shakes with the far-off rumble of thunder. A raindrop lands on my nose. Someone told me once that if a drop of water lands on your nose in a cave, you will have good luck for seven years. I wonder if the same applies to raindrops in your front yard.

Do you remember when you kissed me in the rain because I'd told you months ago that that was what I wished for?

Mother will come outside and yell at me any minute for lying in the grass when a storm is coming, but I really don't care. This is my favorite kind of weather. When the thunder is rumbling and the sky is lighting up and the rain is tumbling down from above, I don't feel quite so crazy.

I open my mouth and let the rain pour in. I want to let it seep into every inch of me, soaking me to the bone, filling me up so that when I walk, my insides slosh like a car driving through a puddle. I want it to cleanse me of the world, isolate me. I want to get drunk off of this rain.

Do you remember when I had a nightmare about you getting hurt at a frat party and you thought I was mad at you because I hardly spoke all day from being so scared?

There's a lovely kind of music in the air when it rains. The thunder is the tympani. The wind is the clarinet, holding out a low note below the rest. The bird, flying frantically to get back to its nest where its babies are, is the flute. My cat, soaking wet and sneaking sulkily back into the house, is the oboe. The raindrops are the drum roll on the snare.

Me? I am the entire strings section. My stomach is the string basses, grumbling and rumbling quietly to itself. My fingers are the violins, constantly twitching and fluttering out sixteenth notes in a continuous rhythm. My feet are the cellos, telling me where to go by providing the base for the rest of me. My heart is the violas, with beautiful high notes and devastating low notes, crescendos and diminuendos that will make or break me.

My head is a different story. My head is the choir, a combination of voices singing different overtones. Sometimes the alto will hit a note, and sometimes the baritone will harmonize with her, but the soprano will make the harmony dissonant with one extra pitch. And the tenor and bass will sing their own things, humming and buzzing and ooh-ing and ah-ing and lalala-ing.

Do you remember when I went to the concert to hear your solo, and your beautiful baritone voice made me cry?

I am the conductor of my own symphony. This one is in four, but every so often, the orchestra gets off from the beat and I have to try to get it back on. Sometimes it's the tympanist's fault when he comes in at the wrong time. Sometimes it's the flutist's fault when she plays a note too sharp. And sometimes it's the strings' faults when their harmonies don't quite match up. And I have to try and get them all back on track again.

And now, the huge crescendo - a slow climb from piano to fortissimo, with the winds and the brass and the strings and and the percussion the choir all playing and singing with every fiber of their beings, vocal chords straining and breaths drawn out to no end and furiously tremolo-ing bows.

The door to the symphony hall bursts open as somebody interrupts the performance. The rain stops, the thunder ends, the wind quiets, the bird settles in its nest.

Do you remember the first time you recoiled when I touched you?

A heartbreaking cadenza echoes from the strings of the violas, resonating in every inch of me, making the other instruments of my body quake in pain. The world stops, listening in rapt silence to the emotion of the melody. A breath of a pause. With one slow, vibrating note, the rain picks up softly, pattering lightly on the warm pavement.

If you could think hard enough, would you remember when you were happy to love me?