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It is a grey morning today. A wet, quiet, grey Sunday morning with a possibility of thunder. The sun is on vacation; lost in a tangle of thick grey-brown clouds like sheets on a hot night. The rain has been playing games: drizzling, then disappearing, then pouring when it finally appears. Like you. So very like you. I am sitting on the window seat, the same place you and I would sit together to relish the rains: for me the wet green trees with dark brown-almost black barks, water gushing down their backs with their gleaming, fat leaves and the silence for you. The ‘silence of the rain’ you called it, even when it would pound on the tin sunshade above the window just like a rude stranger who wanted to barge in and craft a chasm between you and me. We couldn’t even hear our own thoughts.

 I no more have that befuddled, exasperated look on my face reserved specially for your description of ‘The Silence’. My ‘babe in the woods’ expression that according to you said ‘give me a kiss and I’ll comprehend everything you just said’, the expression you loved. Now the rain brings with it my own brand of silence. A silence devoid of your laughter, your voice, your music, your breathing. There is a quiet now. The roaring rain has been subdued to a lazy drizzle and a lone plucky bird dares to call out, the same way I called out to you, begged you to stay back, the same way the trees endeavour to make the rains remain. But do they??? No, they don’t and then they go where they please with not a care in the world for the still thirsty trees they leave behind, alone and shivering, trembling, the howling wind echoing their agony. The rains taunt and tease them saying, ‘come along if you dare, if you care, if you love me.’ Tormented and despondent, enraged at such an affront, hurt at the occurrence of such a doubt they call to the winds and alleviate their misery forever. And so we saw many a broken tree after storms. Not this time though. So it’s okay. You’re here now, where I wanted you. Right where I can see you.
 A simple skid from a moist ladder on a rainy day when you decided to fix the sunshade before you left. You’re here now in the garden you loved so. Beneath the tree I love.
As usual you were considerate to leave me with a gift. You bequeathed a memory of your love so that I won’t be lonesome because like you say lonesome monkeys don’t chatter. But I decided to be alone in the end, like that song that says ‘I’d rather just be alone if I know that I can’t have you’.
So I gave the gift away to someone who’d treasure it much more than a solitary me would. But it’s nearby, near me like you are, like you always will be.

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She walks out of her cottage into the rain kissed day: her dark tresses dancing in the wind, an envelope in her hand, wearing a long blood-red summer frock that clung to her in the the gossamery mist like a sin clings to a lie.
There is music in the air. A stirring harmony of rustling leaves, the drumming pulse of the rain and the plat-plat of droplets dripping down the eaves. The wind whispers around her and a soft spray of rain riding on it embraces her in icy bliss; like, his kiss. The fragrance of the breeze: wet earth, musk and wood. His heady scent.
Overwhelmed she sits beneath the fire tree in an icy monsoon rain. A letter in one hand and a single blue rose in the other.

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After what seems like hours to the little boy looking from the window the lady in the garden from across his slowly gets up and walks back to her house. He thinks she’s pretty, with  black hair and black eyes. Black like the crow he's scared of who'll come and peck him away  if he doesn't have his mum-mum. He likes looking at her when she comes out in the rains. She only comes out when there is a thunderstorm.  He knows because he always watches. Mesmerised the little boy continues to gaze at her until the white wooden fence dividing their properties and the rain drops on the window obscures his view of her. Until he's tired and wants go sleepy in his spidey blanket.....

Until his eye's are heavy and he sees a woman in red spinning a  shimmering-shiny web... But spidey's a boy! And then the girl-spidey becomes his dreaded black cwow and then he's scared and starts crying but then his mama comes slowly into the room and grabs him and feathers him with kissies. He gurgles with joy, the little baby boy. Relieved, the toddler forgets all about spidey and bad cwows. Forgets all about one mama when secure in the arms of another.