finding the words when there are none

describing an indescribable experience

2026 has been peacefully busy thus far, and tonight I was thinking to myself that I need to make more time for writing. There are so many things “to-do” and that should logistically come before a hobby, that it’s just fallen on the back burner (even though it brings me copious amounts of joy). So, a little reminder for your Friday morning: Do the things you love. The mundane will still be there when you’re finished.

After thinking I need to make more time for writing, I thought to myself: now that I’m 5 months back into my hometown, moving into my own space soon, and things have finally settled down a bit, I need to find a local open mic. I’ve only done one to date, and I immediately put it on a list of my top 10 experiences— shout out to my brother for getting me out of my comfort zone. While researching open mics near my new city, I started to ponder what I’d even perform. And it didn’t take much thought before I went back to what I used for my first open mic: a piece that has easily become my favorite in my eleven years of writing. If it’s my favorite, why not perform it again (and again, and again, and again)?

I wrote this piece last summer, after a co-worker of mine asked me the age-old Monday morning question, “How was your weekend?”. I remember being stumped at the question because my weekend was indescribably perfect. I can’t recall what I said to my co-worker that morning, but here’s what I said to a bar full of people about it a month later:

Next week someone is going to ask me how my weekend was, and I’ll try to remember how to answer in human terms, but what do I say? “It was good”? “Relaxing”? It was “Chill”? None of those words know a thing about what really happened. They skim the surface, polite, but they don’t get their hands wet. Not like I did.

How do you describe the feeling of praying for rain and getting something else first? Something quieter, rounder, something that hangs low in the sky and reflects your own awe back at you? How do you explain walking through the night hoping for water from a clouded sky and instead being given light from the moon in a clear sky? A light so bright your shadows are casted on the pavement underneath your feet. Or maybe that was the streetlamps? We’re going to pretend it was the moon. But how do you write off a moment like that with just a chuckle, a shrug, and an “It was good”?

How do you tell someone you stood under the kind of sky that makes you believe in softness again? Where even the oxygen-filled air seemed to hold its breath, letting you have your moment with her? How do you explain the way your own voice sounded foreign in your throat when you pointed upward and asked if anything more beautiful had ever existed, not expecting an answer, and certainly not expecting to become the answer to your own question? What do you say about that? “My weekend was beautiful”? Not even close.

How do you capture what it feels like when your soul is glowing and your heart spills over in real time? When laughter becomes a kind of medicine and a silly show is the backdrop to something sacred? When you feel like a guest in a scene you couldn’t have scripted better, even if you tried? How do you capture something you’ve just experienced that you’ve only experienced previously in dreams? Maybe I’ll say, “dreams really do come true”? Too cliche.

And then the rain does come. Not when you demanded it, but when it was ready. No announcement, no theatrics, just a beckoning. A subtle shift in the air. It no longer smells like 100 different kinds of trees and 1 singular bush of white lilies. Instead, the smell of petrichor raises the hair on your body and fills your lungs with its air: a hush before the offering. How do you describe stepping outside barefoot only to soak your favorite satin pajamas on purpose? When you’ve been asking for rain all day and it finally arrives, you don’t hide from it. You meet it. You surrender. And it holds you like it’s been listening the whole time. And it holds you like the imprint your body has made in their couch, because that’s where you’ve been, happily, up until the rain made its debut. How do you describe that? “Wet? My weekend was wet?” Not quite.

There is something sacred in letting go of control long enough to let nature baptize you without reason. You don’t check the time. You don’t pause the experience to grab your phone to record it. Live in the moment people, this is the whole point. You don’t worry about tomorrow. You just let the rain trace every curve of your body. It’s not dramatic, it’s devotional. You become part of the evening, like another tree swaying or roof weeping.

You are completely present and not just in your body, but in the moment, in the night, in the scent of wet earth, and the sound of thunder rumbling like the lullaby you’d usually need a few hours from now but tonight you don’t because tonight you have something better than a lullaby: you have safety. Silence. You dry off, you change clothes, you return to the cocoon of the imprint in the couch, but the experience hasn’t ended. It’s just steeping. The rain on the skylight, the trees tapping the windows, the warm dry cotton that replaced plastered wet satin: it’s all part of the same unspoken conversation. The kind where everything is understood, even in silence.

Later, the rain comes again, as if to say, “I’m not done with you yet”. And this time, you don’t go alone. How do you sum up the experience experienced individually? But how do you possibly begin to sum up this experience that’s even better now? Accompanied?

There’s no language for those few minutes, only instinct, awe, and touch. A mutual witnessing. No thoughts, no clock, no performance. Just two beings in nature, becoming part of it. There’s no script here, there’s no clever lines. Only eyes that speak fluently in reverence. Only breath and closeness and skin and rain. Only the kind of embrace that takes nothing from you, not even your breath. But the kind of embrace that gives back a piece you knew was missing, but weren’t expecting to regain in that moment.

So when someone says, “How was your weekend?”, maybe I’ll smile, I’ll nod, and maybe I’ll say something about “taking it easy”. But inside, I’ll still be standing in that rain. Still soaked in something I can’t name. Still rewinding a memory that feels more like a secret the sky told me than a story I’m capable of retelling.

Some experiences don’t translate. Some don’t survive small talk. And maybe they’re not supposed to. Maybe they’re supposed to be simply: lived. Fully, reverently, like rain after a long dry prayer. Maybe they’re supposed to be just: felt. Like the sky answering your request, like a whisper only your soul understands. What it feels like to finally arrive in your own life, to finally exist as yourself. Like home. Finally. Maybe some experiences are supposed to feel like home and that’s it.

When someone asks me how my weekend was I will say: “I’d like to experience my weekend over and over and over and over again if I may”. I have so much more to convey but we’d be here all day and I could talk about this until my face turns an array of grey. Put yourself in my shoes and tell me, what would you say?