text: Above the chatter, a woman gritted her teeth and pushed, her screams partly silencing the crowd around her. On the horizon, no one seemed to notice, maybe there was another birth going on there right now, or maybe a conception. The woman near me hung on to the shoulders of the women and men around her, I could make out one of her hands squeezing another woman’s shoulder, her bright red hand clenching so tight that the skin on the shoulder was pale, she’d probably leave a bruise. I made out the smell of her birth, even through the many other unwashed people between us. She pushed again, this time shoving those around her so hard that I felt the energy ripple through the crowd. A few of the men around me sighed as the ripple of shoving hit them. A light misting rain began to fall and muffled the air. The clouds had hung low all day, and now they had finally broke. The horizon went out of sight, but I could still see the woman. Her face was pointed calmly towards the sky, the rain indistinguishable from the sweat on her face. I could see her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. Rain always quieted people down, it softened the tensions between neighbors, and lessened the body heat constantly caused by the brushing of our bodies against one another. Other people raised their open mouths to taste the air and quench their throat. They moaned and sighed as they gulped, contrasting to the painful noises of the mother. The rain picked up and began to disturb members of the mass. People pushed and shuffled through the crowd, agitated by the weather. Was it instinctual to be so resistant and uncomfortable in the rain, does the body naturally seek shelter? The agitated began to flow together in concise paths through the mass of bodies and in turn causing more people to move, swear, and grow angry. Nobody ever liked when too many people moved, such as this uneasiness. Resolute old men were known to swear by their stature, hardly moving from their spot for years or decades. All should be done in their spot. It was safest not to move, lessen the chance of losing a family member or nice neighbor. I had moved once like those moving now to avoid the rain, and I regret it. The slamming of bodies, the pushing of strangers, the trampling. The mother had been pushed to the opposite side of the river of people. I wasn’t sure if her neighbors had carried her out of the way or if she had moved of her own accord. It made the air feel more anxious than usual, her birth and the rain. The rain got worse and the puddles grew larger. The flow of people widened and slowed. They sloughed through the mud that their trampling feet had created when mixed with rain and the usual filth. The mother wasn’t audible anymore from this distance with the angry noise of the movement and the increasing slamming of the rain. I could feel the oil running from my hair now, as it trickled around my nose. I could taste my sweat and dust, watery in the rain. I licked the roof of my mouth and blinked my eyes rapidly. It was becoming too much. So I closed my eyes, trying to forget the world. I breathed in. I breathed out. I focused on my breathing. *Breath in.* *Breath out.* *Breath in, breath out.* The rain was running all over my body. Soaking my hair and clothes. Tiny streams of it ran around my neck and down between my chest, another down the spine of my back, each vertebrae slightly tickled. I raised my head and my closed eyes fluttered and winced at the falling rain. My body jostled from the outside, but I swayed with the flow. I patted my toes in the puddles, wiggled my knees ever so slightly. I could feel the warm darkness inside the cavity of my body growing closer, richer, soon it would reach my eyes and my brain. And it did, until my head felt like balloon carrying the light weight of my body, and my eyes felt like oiled marbles, like bearings rolling idly in a wheel. I became unaware of my breathing, yet felt the rhythm of the skin on my chest sliding over my ribs. I moved my eyes under their lids. Life and light emerged in the void, colors swirled and children’s laughter echoed. Children running around in a circle holding hands. I can still feel the breeze. Then the mother screamed, her highest note. The baby had come, “The baby has come!”, “The baby has come”, “The baby is here!”, “The baby is with us. “Baby, baby baby!” I opened my eyes, though they still winced in the smashing rain. The flow of moving bodies had grown larger, yet now it began to circle around the mother. The woman and her new girl in the eye of the spiraling mass. They all chanted, “Baby!” The woman brought the girl to her chest to suck. The rain washed the babe clean in a few moments, revealing her thin black hair and brown skin.