Rain on the roof

It began as a few scattered taps on the window, the way rain knocks before it comes in. You were reading, or half-reading, and you put the book down to listen. The taps found each other, joined up, and became a steady conversation with the roof. There was nothing else to do, so you let it talk.

The cabin is small and old and honest about it. The roof has known a hundred storms and keeps them all in its creaks. The rain moves across it in waves — a rush by the chimney, a patter over the bedroom, then a long, patient drumming over the porch where the boots live.

You pour the last of the kettle. The water was boiled for tea an hour ago and has gone quiet and warm. The cup is chipped on the rim, which makes it yours. You wrap both hands around it and let the rain do the thinking for a while.

Outside, the garden has stopped trying to be anything. The flowers bend under the drops, the lawn goes dark and glossy, and a small bird sits very still in the hedge, waiting out the weather with the calm of someone who knows it will pass. You feel oddly like the bird.

The rain finds every surface and makes its own music: the soft hiss in the grass, the ring of the metal barrel by the door, the deeper note where it slides off the eaves into the puddles. Close your eyes and you could count the rooms of the cabin just by the sound of the weather on them.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolls — not close, not dramatic, just a long, sleepy yawn from the hills. You count slowly after it, the way you did as a child. By the time you reach twelve, it has already forgotten itself.

You are not waiting for the rain to stop. That's the thing. There's nowhere to go, nothing scheduled. The rain could stay all night and it would simply become the sound of the night. The dark gathers at the windows, patient, while the roof keeps up its quiet work.

You turn off the lamp. The room doesn't go fully dark — there's a soft glow from the kitchen, and the window holds a paler rectangle where the world is. The rain continues, steady as a heartbeat you don't have to think about.

Your head finds the pillow, and the pillow has been waiting. The cup is in the sink, the book is closed, the kettle is done. The rain says the same thing over and over, in a thousand small variations, until the words stop mattering and only the rhythm is left.

Let the weather keep its watch. Let the roof keep its count. You have handed the night over to the sound of rain on the roof, and the rain is glad to have it.