A Town For Rainy Days

There is a town a little north of mine that only exists on rainy days.‎The roads don't lead there when the sun is out, and the train tracks seem to forget where they are going. Even the birds fly around it instead of over it, as though they know something the rest of us don't.‎But when the clouds gather low and the world turns the colour of wet pavement, the town appears.‎The houses are small and warm, the shopkeepers know everyone's names, the bakery always smells like cinnamon, and nobody is ever in a hurry.‎It is, by all accounts, a very nice place.‎I know this because I spent most of my childhood there.‎The first time I went, I was five years old.‎My father had come home angry.‎I don't remember why.‎That was the strange thing about his anger. It rarely seemed attached to anything. It drifted through the house like weather, settling wherever it pleased.‎A dropped spoon.‎A misplaced sock.‎A television left on for too long.‎Anything could become a storm.‎That evening, my mother was standing at the sink when the shouting started. I was sitting on the floor with a book open in my lap.‎I don't remember what I did.‎Maybe I looked at him the wrong way. Maybe I was too slow to answer.‎Whatever it was, his hand caught me across the side of my face before I understood what I'd done.‎The book slipped from my lap, and onto the floor.‎I remember staring at it for a long time.‎I remember the sound of rain tapping against the window.‎And I remember thinking, with the complete certainty only a child could possess,‎I wish I could go anywhere else.‎And so I did.‎•💧•‎I don't know how to explain this part to someone who has never done it. It wasn't like closing my eyes, or like falling asleep. It was more like a door I hadn't noticed before simply agreeing to open, and me simply agreeing to walk through it.‎One second I was on the floor of our kitchen, my father's voice cracking against the walls like broken glass. The next, I was standing on a narrow street lined with yellow-brick buildings.‎Rain fell gently from a lavender sky.‎I would come to learn that the town always rained just before someone arrived.‎A woman swept the step outside a shop. She looked up and smiled at me like she'd been expecting me all along.‎"Come in," she said softly. "you're safe here."‎I did not ask her what she meant. I did not ask her anything, really. She just handed me a paper bag containing two warm pastries and pointed me toward the town square.‎The rain followed me there, soft enough that nobody bothered with umbrellas.‎Flowers climbed the walls of houses and the streets glistened like polished stone. Puddles reflected skies that looked a little more colourful than the one above us.‎Somewhere, a clock chimed every hour, though I never found the tower it belonged to.‎The shop windows glowed with warm amber light, though evening never seemed quite ready to arrive.‎I don't know how long I stayed in the town. Time worked differently there, the way it does in dreams, or in the very worst and very best moments of a life.‎When I came back, my mother was crying quietly in her room, and my father's voice had gone from the house completely. I was still lying on the kitchen floor.‎Nobody noticed I had been gone.That was the first time, but it was not the last.‎‎•💧•‎The town became a habit after that.‎A secret place.‎Whenever things became too loud at home, I would find myself there.‎Sometimes I arrived by train.‎Sometimes by bus.‎But every time, it was raining, or about to rain, when I appeared there.‎The people never asked where I had come from.‎Only whether I was hungry.‎Or cold.‎Or happy.‎Some afternoons, children raced folded paper boats along the gutters while the rain carried them through the streets. They argued fiercely over whose boat sailed the furthest, then forgot entirely who had won by the next downpour.‎Nothing extraordinary ever happened there.‎And somehow, that was the extraordinary thing.‎There were no loud voices, no slammed doors. Nobody flinched when footsteps came down the hallway. If someone broke a plate, everyone laughed before sweeping it up together.‎By the time I was ten, the town was the only thing I had to look forward to. ‎That night, my father came home, angry and drunk as usual.‎My mother had learned that silence sometimes hurt less than speaking, so the whole house sat inside it together.‎Rain battered the windows.‎I remember thinking the town would be beautiful tonight.‎I almost smiled.‎Then my father looked at me.‎"What are you smiling at?"‎Nothing.‎I wasn't smiling at him.‎I was already halfway gone.‎The first blow knocked me onto the floor.‎The second made everything ring.‎My mother was shouting now.‎My father was shouting louder.‎Outside, rain hammered against the roof so hard, it sounded like applause.‎I closed my eyes.‎When I opened them, I was standing on the narrow street lined with yellow-brick buildings, rain falling gently beneath the same lavender sky. The woman was sweeping her step like she always did.‎That was the last time I ever arrived.‎I waited for the pull back toward home, the way there always used to be, some invisible thread tugging at my ribs. But it didn't come. I stood there in the rain a long time, waiting to be called back to a kitchen floor, to a mother who would need me to be brave again in the morning.‎Nobody called me back.‎I did not go home that day, or the next, or any day after.‎Time still moved sideways there. The bakery still smelled of cinnamon. The children still raced their paper boats and forgot who had won by the next downpour.‎But one afternoon, the woman who swept the step outside the shop was gone. I don't remember deciding to pick up the broom. Only that it was in my hands, and the step needed sweeping,‎I have been sweeping ever since.‎•💧•There is a town a little north of yours that only exists on rainy days.Somewhere, the clouds are gathering over another house.Somewhere, a child is wishing to be anywhere else.The town is already raining.When they arrive, I'll be there to tell them they're safe.

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