In the Darkling Lin
I remember feeling grateful for the rain. I remember it well because gratitude did not belong there in that small carpark off the main road from Loch Leven. Our world was falling apart around us, our future receding before our eyes like floodwater. Yes, the rain was meeting us, matching us, holding and wrapping us. It fell hard and heavy on the roof and windscreen. Its thick white noise filled the car like water, as if we were sinking into the deep. The words we spoke purled and plashed about the cabin and on the dash. They ran in runnels and tripped like tears. They are lost now to that deep and darkling lin, swallowed by the years gone by. I can still feel the deluge, and the gratitude I felt for it. I recall the darkness riven by the rain, the beams that broke the pitch, and I recall our reflection in all of it.
Earlier that evening, sitting in a loud and cosy pub, we were alerted to the limits of our time together. Something so vast and dense, we could neither pass through nor navigate around it. Katie and I were stunned, bereft, and broken. On our way home she pulled into the car park to let the rain subside. Or, perhaps she stopped to breathe and cry. I tried to kiss away her tears, but they fell and fell and the seats on which we sat held us coldly at a distance. At some point, to save the vehicle’s battery, Katie turned the headlights off. The total darkness curled and crashed. I remember thinking I did not know I could ever feel quite so sad.
The deluge passed, the devastation crackled like static. Katie turned the ignition and lit the sodden square. I imagine that we squeezed one another’s hands, that we kissed, or clung to one another, though I cannot remember doing so at all. We stayed together for a few years after that wrought and rainy night. Perhaps we tended to the scored and severed rifts we discovered. Bandaged by busy days, we soaked, wrapped and put them away. Exchanged them for a little longer, a little more. Before, at last, we each let the other go.
© Joe Marshall
Joe Marshall lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom where he is studying to be a therapist. His work has previously appeared in Firewords Magazine.
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