In my room I wait, hopeful eyes turned up to a hopeless abyss. I sit at my window, as silent and still as the glass pane through which I gaze. My hands, busy on my lap, play a silly little game of twisting and pulling—a game that shall never be won or lost, so long as they are both attached to my wrists. 

In my heart I am outside, standing underneath the oak tree. I am spinning as leaves–yellow, red, and orange–shower me in flecks of gold. I am breathing deeply through my nose as a gentle wind wraps itself around my shoulders in a loving embrace. I am stretching out my arms and catching droplets of warm rain on my fingers, and putting them on the tip of my tongue to taste their sweet sensations. 

With rain I will return, you once said to me in a dream. And so here I am: sitting and waiting in the autumn rain. My room is quiet and cold, and so clean it is almost unsettling. I do not lie in my bed, rifling the smooth covers. I do not open my closet, disturbing neat stacks of clothes. Instead, I watch as droplets of water roll down my window like tears that roll down smooth cheeks. They race each other: sadness competing to overwhelm. They join each other: sadness combining to overwhelm. How terribly paradoxical that the rain is on the other side of the glass, and I cannot wipe the tears away. 

Behind the water beading on my window, there is a happy girl walking down the lane beneath the oak tree. Her head is tilted upward in a dream and her arms are swinging forward in a dance. She skips slightly as she goes, smiling sunnily at the darkened clouds. The wind blows fiercely, scattering dying leaves throughout the air, and rushing along the muddy floor. The girl lifts her arms as though she is flying, letting her hair blow back and her body lean into the force of the wind. She laughs a little, and I like to think that she almost looks like me.

All day I sit here—watching as people come and go, all with lives to lead that have nothing to do with myself, or this little window through which I look. I envy them. The determination in their walk, the passion in their steps. None of them are waiting on an unpromised hope–a hope as silly as believing an evergreen tree will lose its leaves.

With rain I will return. The melodious pelting of raindrops on my rooftop is soothing; I lean back in my chair, pulling my knees to my chest and pressing my tired hands between them. Outside my window, the sky darkens until all I can see is the eerie yellow glow of the street lamp, illuminating a small diameter of wet, trodden leaves.

With rain I will return. It is raining, and I am here waiting.

With rain I will return. It has rained for so long, and I am so tired of waiting.

With rain I will return. I relieve my neck from the strain of holding up my head, and my eyes from the dutiful task of staying open.

My mind begins to wander, floating through the air like an airborne leaf, drifting down to the ground. I slowly fade away, into a long-awaited sleep. And as I do so, the autumn rain persists.