#Suburban Gothic: Cleansing Day

There exists a holiday that is often only observed in hindsight...

There exists a holiday that is often only observed in hindsight.

It has no set date on the human or lunar calendars, and indeed it can fall on different days in different cities. Cleansing Day is the day of the first rain after pollen season has concluded.

Rivulets of yellow are swirled down sidewalks and along roads. The continuous downpour ushers the loathsome golden-green dust into storm drains and retention ponds. Many will not know it until later, but this is the last they will see of it for the rest of the year.

One last rinse before being left out to bake in the summer sun.

There are those who intentionally observe this holiday. They watch for the time when the pine flowers begin to fall from betwixt green needles, and gather their strength for the next rain, preparing to quash bad habits or cut themselves free of dead-wood relationships.

It is a time not to reflect, but to prepare: to let seeds settle in, and fruits begin to grow. To weed out those things which will not do, and to be shed of what no longer brings joy–or what never did.

It is the kind of holiday that those in keener days might have used as a reason to give “sacrifices” of those unwanted and unwelcome. All the better that such traditions are no longer openly observed; man has ever been a poor judge of who is worthy of life.

There are still a few, not of the ranks of men, who take up the task. On the morn after a Cleansing Day, there are some who breathe a wary sigh of relief, as the source of their torment is found to be inexplicably and, they will soon learn, permanently absent.

Taken by the post-rain mist in the quiet hours, or interred in a storm drain beneath the road, they need never know.