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 by any liquid.

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. The skin upon my hands is pale and parched as sand, the lines on my palms mere cracks in a rain-starved plain.

I want to feel wet, feel the water seeping through my skin and flooding my veins, feel its kiss on my cheek 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 need the water.

But it doesn’t reach my skin.