Raining Dreams

By Peter Bowden



That afternoon, it was raining dreams. Not water exactly, but something softer, warmer, as if the sky had been storing up old thoughts and finally let them go. They slid down the windows in silver threads, whispering as they fell. He sat very still, afraid that if he moved too quickly the dreams might scatter, like moths startled from lamplight. The room held its breath with him, dust motes floating like forgotten wishes.

The dreams thickened in the air. Some carried the weight of childhood summers, bare feet on hot concrete, the echo of a screen door slamming, a voice calling his name from far off and forever ago. Others were heavier, soaked through with longing, with roads not taken and letters never written. They seeped into him the way rain seeps into dry ground, finding cracks he didn’t know were there, softening the hard places, teaching them how to bend again.

When the rain finally eased, the world looked newly imagined. Pavement gleamed like polished memory. Leaves trembled, rinsed clean of yesterday. He stepped outside and felt the last dreams brush past his face, settling into the earth with a quiet promise. He understood then that dreams do not vanish when they fall, they wait. And somewhere beneath his feet, in the dark and patient soil of time, they were already beginning to grow.

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