📷: Joel Overbeck

In a perfect world it would rain when I wanted it to, and we would run in it. We would run down the front steps of wherever we were, whether a coffee shop or a best friend’s apartment complex, or the cobblestone path in front of the grocery store—it wouldn’t matter. It would be raining, hard, and you would grab my hand and pull me to you. I would be wearing a dress, because I love dresses and the way the fabric dances around my legs, but the rain would make it heavy and you would be wearing jeans, maybe. Ones that hugged you around the waist, maybe not jeans, maybe it won’t matter what we’re wearing because I would just be loving you. We would run down those steps, the rain would make my hair stick to my face and you would brush it back, the way you always did. And then we would dance. But no slow dances, I could never do those anyways, you remember. No, the type of dancing where you skip, where you spin in circles and watch the rain fall and forget the people peering out of the windows or walking under umbrellas. They will look at us funny, they always do, but they won’t understand that this is a perfect world. And it’s only raining because I want it to. And I love the rain because we can dance in it. And we would dance. You would spin me around and I would turn the wrong way, because well, I’m wearing a dress that’s sticking to my body and I’m all curves and you’re distracted and suddenly we’re laughing and kissing and there’s no thunder to scare us, we’re just standing in puddles not worried about time or heartbreak. Just for a moment, we could be seventeen or eighty-four. We could be at the prom, our smiles aching from camera flashes or we could be standing on the clear ledge of the skyscraper, watching cars like ants move miles and miles below. Or we could be under blankets with candles and warm summer air, losing ourselves in each other’s eyes. We could be all those places at once. In a perfect world. In this world I made for us.