Before Portland Decides to Rain

The gutters start before I am fully awake — that specific sound, the one that means the rain has committed, the one that means it is Saturday.

I do not check the clock. I know what time it is the way I know my own name.

The duvet is already over my head. I pulled it there sometime in the night, or maybe I never let it go. Under here the light is the colour of old linen and the rain is muffled to something almost musical, the irregular percussion of it filling the gutter, running, pausing, filling again. I have been listening to this sound every Saturday for long enough that my body has learned to read it. The sound arrives and something in my lower stomach answers, a slow unwinding, a loosening I did not decide to allow.

I am not proud of how precisely I need this.

The sleep shirt has ridden up in the night and the hem sits across the tops of my thighs. The cotton is thin, washed to nothing, and where it presses against my skin it holds the warmth I have been generating for hours without knowing it. I am aware of that warmth now. I have been aware of it for several minutes, which is how I know the ritual has already begun even though I have not moved.

The drawer is on the left side. It always is. I do not have to reach far.

I open it without looking. My right hand stays flat against the mattress, palm down, grounded there the way I have learned to ground it. My left hand finds the shape in the dark of the drawer by feel — the familiar weight of it, the specific cool of the silicone before it warms. I set it beside me on the sheet without turning my head. The rain fills the pause.

I lie still for a moment longer than I need to.

This is the part I would not be able to explain — the deliberate waiting, the moment before the moment, the way I have learned that the wanting is its own thing and I do not have to rush it. My stomach contracts once, a small involuntary tightening, and I let the exhale that follows come out at whatever length it chooses. It comes out longer than the breath that preceded it. It unfolds into the warm dark under the duvet and I feel my thighs, which have been pressed together, register the shift in my breathing.

They are still together. They are still closed.

But my left hand has already closed around the rabbit and the silicone has already begun to warm and the gutters are running full and steady now, that particular Saturday sound, the one my body has learned to answer.

I am not grateful for the need. I am only grateful it still works.

I let my knees begin to part.