Rain

It's raining clothes on Queen Street, surprise moving day for an unlucky bachelor. I wasn't there when it all went down, but it's rained clothes before. And I can imagine the scene and the shirts unfolding, polos parachuting to the ground.

There had been a cloud of tension threatening rain for several weeks now; the cap wasn't on the milk, the tick of his wrist watch was too loud, he didn't say enough, he talked too much. Every confrontation was like a new cloud that darkened the atmosphere of their apartment, but after so many arguments, the clouds had become the sky. They didn't know where the sun was, and they'd stopped wondering.

The thunder rumbled in the distance as they sat working in their living room just 24 hours before the break of the storm.
"Can you stop that?"
He exhaled in a dramatic display of exasperation before slightly raising his eyebrows to ask, "What?"
"That scratching. You've been scratching your arm for an hour now and I can't take it any longer." It was always noise that provoked arguments between them. The silence that had taken up residency in their apartment a few months ago seemed to magnify each irritating noise that he made.

He stared at her with disbelief and disapproval, scratched his arm jeeringly, then dropped his gaze and closed his laptop. He stood up from the armchair he'd been sitting in. It was the one they'd bought together a little over a year ago...

**
Driving down 23 toward New Holland, going nowhere, going anywhere, just getting out of the apartment for the afternoon, they'd seen a flee market in a parking lot. They pretended they'd been headed there all along and pulled in. After 30 minutes of feigned interest in antique balls of Play Doh and paint-by-number portraits of puppies, they saw it, the most hideous blend of burnt orange cotton/polyester fabric to ever cover the frame of an armchair. An hour later, they were back in the apartment, fighting each other for butt space on the first piece of furniture they had purchased as a couple.

**
The door shut behind him, and she was alone with a silly young couple squeezed together on an empty burnt orange armchair. She stared at them for a moment, before walking into the kitchen to leave the distraction of giddy love behind, but when she turned the corner, she found they had followed her.

**
A boy pretending to be a man was standing behind the girl that used to be her at the kitchen sink. He was scrubbing their hands together with dish soap and warm water, swaying along to a song. It was winter, and even though the radio stations had all jumped on the christmas carol bandwagon too soon, they never got tired of singing along to Dominik the Donkey when it played. But they weren't singing along to the radio or screwing their faces into donkey-like grins as they stood at the sink. They were singing their own song. It was a lazy made-up tune that felt warm like the warm water on their hands, like the warmth of two people swaying together, and like the warm friendship that heated their winter apartment.

**
But now it was hot. She flicked the switch to the overhead fan in the cramped space they claimed as their kitchen. Leaning against the counter, the heat seemed to be just as intense as it had been that morning. Heavy humid clouds held the heat of the sun through the night which meant that for the few unfortunate people that couldn't afford air conditioning, there was no escape from the world turned oven. Sometimes she blamed their failing relationship on the weather. It was too hot to worry about anything except dying of heat exhaustion let alone another person, and so with temperatures that encourage unstable tempers and tempers that encourage unstable relationships, the love that had previously occupied apartment 3B had evaporated.

Where was all of it going? She wondered? Where was all of this love evaporating too? The clouds, the argument clouds were holding happiness over her head and out of her reach. How much could they hold? How much more could they take?

Twenty-four hours later she had her answer:

All it took was one look as he walked in the door that morning, one look and she knew that the clouds would no longer hold happiness from her. She had been waiting for rain, but this time she couldn’t wait any longer. She would make it rain. Her eyes blurred with fury as she rushed to their room. She threw open their bedroom window, tried to break the dresser drawer while forcing it open, and sunk her hands into his shirts. As she flung his wardrobe out the window, she released the words that were never spoken from their cage in her stomach with one piercing scream.

There's a burnt orange polyester shirt poking out from the mangled heap of clothing on the sidewalk. It's hideous, and it's wet from the warm rain that's steadily coming down, subduing the heat. And she’s watching droplets fall outside her window from a chair in her apartment on Queen Street.

Shhh... you're not in love

How to know that you're not in love:

1. Look at that oh so special finger on your left hand and admire the none existent ring you're wearing.

2. Count the 17 short years of your life and remember that your hormones are still holding the reigns to your frontal lobe

3. Pretend to be your mom for five minutes and feel utterly embarrassed at how juvenile the so called "relationship" you're staging is.

4. List your top five favorite conversations that you've had with your significant other; realize you've had less than five actual conversations and that all three of them have been via Facebook or texting.

But you can try. Some of you might even make it. Let's just keep things in perspective, and more importantly, let's keep our "love lives" to ourselves.