She fights the wind at the front door, and I want to tell her: let it lose. The umbrella has turned itself inside out, ribs bent backward like a startled bird, and she is swearing at it, this small black nothing that cannot even hold its shape. She has forgotten what the rain is doing to her at the same time.
It is landing on the back of her neck, cold and alive, sliding down under her collar, and her skin is answering it, all those tiny hairs standing up, gooseflesh, a whole body reporting for duty. She would give anything, she thinks, to be dry. I would give anything to be wet.
Look at your hands, I want to say. Look how they wrap the wet fabric, how they feel the drag of it, the seam biting your palm, the give of the little metal catch under your thumb. You are holding weather at arm's length and complaining about the effort. Once I stood exactly there and shook a folded umbrella out onto this mat and felt nothing but late, nothing but bother.
She wins, finally. Wrestles the ribs back the right way, gets the button to hold. Steps out under it into the gray, that soft roar of drops on nylon just above her head, a little roof she carries, a little dry country the size of her shoulders. She does not hear how lovely it is.
Go carefully out there. Let it soak your shoes a little. Feel every dull, dripping minute of the walk, and I will keep this doorway warm, or try to, though warm is one more thing I only remember.