It rained a little hard this afternoon: the sort of rain that my parents usually warned me about as a kid. Summer rains brought with it all manner disease. Summer rains brought out the woolly caterpillars from their burrows underneath the trees: the sorts that would give you rashes and sore eyes at the slightest touch. Summer rains brought out the heat trapped beneath the soil, and breathing in the thick air would bring about influenza. Summer rains can shock your system, causing wheezing and sneezing and coughing.
It didn’t rain as much on this day last year. I remember doing some last-minute shopping at the nearby Korean store, buying just a little more of the dumplings and meats and kimchi that I usually bought in the middle of the month. The lines at the supermarkets were just a little too long for me to bear. Somehow I cannot blame the panicked buyers for piling grocery bags high with all sorts of canned goods and rice bags and rubbing alcohol bottles: after all, we were just a few weeks removed from a volcanic eruption that covered Manila in fine, gray ash.
Just a few days before all that, all we were asked to do was to wash our hands, and maybe cough and sneeze on the crook of our elbows. It has gone through many versions since then: using a very particular kind of mask, wearing an acrylic face shield on top of it, installing plastic films inside public utility vehicles, and staying at home. A thing that was supposed to last just so, until we found ourselves exactly where we are today.
It rained hard this afternoon: March 15, 2021. It’s been 365 days since lockdown. And in those brief moments that I spent waiting for the rain to die down before I can head back over to my apartment, I wondered—briefly—if the summer rains carried the coronavirus, too.
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