On Rain and Romance

Recent foot surgery has forced me to become better acquainted with my couch. By the time Sunday evening rolled around I had overdosed on Jane Austen movies, gotten sick from my prescription cocktail, and was tossing menacing glances at my cherry red cast. A sullen mood had found me and I didn't feel up to shaking it. I opened the sliding door to let in the heavy smell of rain, turned on the "Les Miserables" soundtrack, and sat down to an aggravatingly cheery Thomas Kinkade puzzle. The sullen mood evolved into a series of deep and melancholy musings that at times included a bit of the fanciful.

Jean Valjean had just settled his identity crisis, and I had just placed the last piece in a bright window when out of the rain came my roommate. She had just returned from a long walk with a young man of interest. Dripping she sat down beside me and slowly divulged her heart's complications as I finished a snow covered gable. A star crossed Eponine wandered the wet streets of Paris alone.

An hour later the puzzle lay forgotten, and both of our hearts were answer less and somber. Outside the rain pattered on, and in it all of the young Frenchmen lay dying.

There is something about literary romances and the smell of rain that makes love seem a lost cause.