Asian Storm

It’s a glorious thing to be caught off guard as the rain pours down from cloudy blackness to the earth below and Asian city streets. We brought the ponchos with us, but they sat in the basket on the front of the motorbike, getting as wet as we were. But unlike our clothes, the plastic ponchos didn’t soak up the rain. And so we sped onward toward our destination—liquid bullets piercing our skin—me smiling under my helmet at the sudden glory of storms. I didn’t have anywhere else to be tonight, so why should I care if I arrived soaked to the skin, shivering under the unexpected cold blown in by the late summer storm?

Everything is better on the back of a motorbike—even the rain. Painful though it may be as it slashes my face, arms, legs and tops of my flip-flopped feet, it is somehow still beautiful. Even as I breathe in exhaust from the cars driving past with warm and dry passengers, I grin at my circumstances, knowing that I am living and feeling and breathing every exhaust-filled, rain-soaked, cloudy-skied moment that comes my way tonight.