About the work

The umbrella was a gift from his sister, a joke about his perpetual gloom. He’d never opened it before tonight, always left it leaning against the back of the closet door, still in its plastic sleeve. He found it in the dark, fumbling, the rain already a curtain. The yellow was startling under the streetlights, a small, luminous sun in the sodden grey. It felt almost defiant, an act of pure will against the deluge. But even now, holding it aloft, he isn’t sure if it’s an act of defiance, or of surrender.