Ana smiled. She remembered her grandmother reading that one aloud on nights just like this, her voice a low counterpoint to the weather. Outside, the wind answered Frost’s call, rattling the fire escape and sending a spray of droplets against the glass.
She closed her eyes and listened. Not as someone waiting for the storm to pass. But as someone who had finally learned to stay.
It was the kind of rain that didn’t just fall—it insisted. Ana stood at the window of her small apartment, watching the city dissolve into smudges of light and shadow. The streetlamps bled gold onto the wet asphalt, and somewhere a lone car splashed through a puddle, its sound swallowed by the steady drumming on the roof.
A fresh gust shook the tree outside, and a cascade of water streamed down the gutter. She thought of another quote, not written in the journal but one her grandmother had whispered once, tucking Ana into bed during a thunderstorm: