Drought

It is what it is. I dunno, the thought just came to me this evening.

I can’t remember ever being wet through, wet past the skin and the clothes and the muscle behind it, wet to the bone.

I drink but there’s only a core of coolness, no more. My palms are still dry, and even if I reach out to the rain I know that what lies behind my skin is forever dehydrated, untouchable.

It feels like the fibres of my muscles have shrunk together, and I have grown used to the faint pinch of drought at my fingertips. It is always there. I can bathe, but it is nothing. I can drink, but it doesn’t reach my skin. What will?

I can feel the ever-drying heat rise off me even as I sit here. It happens sometimes. I feel like the desert. There is water far within, yes, but it is deep and hidden and altogether useless to me now. No matter what may come, no matter what great waves may come to wash away my world, I cannot help but feel that my hands will be dry. After all, the skin upon them is pale and parched as sand, the lines upon them mere cracks in an endless rain-starved plain.

I want to feel wet, feel the water seeping through my skin and flooding my veins, feel its kiss on my skin instead of the sun’s. I want to feel lost in the midst of a river, as if I stand in a monsoon and all around me, above me, beneath me, there is only the drenching rain. I want to be so utterly soaked through that I cannot remember ever being dry. I need the water.

But it will never reach my skin.