Most people hear heavy rain and reach for an umbrella. The speaker of Ella's poem hears it and says, over and over, that she likes it. The opening lines already set her apart from the crowd: "in the street people stop and take shelter," while she watches from her window, and later walks out into it. The poem asks why someone would love what everyone else avoids, and its answer is that the storm gives her permission to feel what she already feels.
The strongest evidence is the refrain. "I like it when it rains hard" opens eight stanzas in a row, and each time something new follows the word "And." The effect is cumulative, like drops adding up. At first the reasons are about hiding. She can cry "beneath dark skies pouring rains" and "no one will notice." Her "insecurities fade away." The rain works as cover, a curtain between her and other people's eyes. The image is neat, because the sky is doing the crying too, so her tears become one small part of a much bigger weather.
Then the poem turns, and the turn is easy to miss. Instead of staying hidden, she decides to leave: "I will run outside and walk for an hour or two / Away from home / To look for rainbow." The verbs are worth noticing. She runs, then walks, as if urgency gives way to a slower, steadier searching. The rainbow, which can only appear after rain, is the poem's one image of hope. It is also only something she goes to look for. We never see her find it, and the poem seems comfortable with that.
The final stretch is built on a second, quieter refrain: "Like I feel." It appears three times, each time alone on its own short line, and the rain is compared to her each time. It is "so cold / Like I feel." People crave "company / Like I feel." They wish "they should have stayed at home / Like I feel." The comparisons move from a physical sensation (cold) to an emotional one (wanting company) to something close to regret. That last one is puzzling, since she is the one who chose to go out. The poem suggests, though it never says so, that some part of her feels misplaced or wishes for a safer, warmer place. The rain makes everyone else feel that way too, and that is the comfort. Her loneliness is shared for once, because strangers hurrying for cover are briefly feeling something like what she carries every day.
Formally, the poem is free verse with no rhyme and no regular metre. Repetition does the work that rhyme usually would. The line lengths are uneven and the language plain and spoken, which fits the voice of someone confiding rather than performing. Some phrasing is slightly unconventional ("pouring rains," "every one," "look for rainbow"), and this gives the voice a raw, unpolished honesty, as if the words were written down before they could be tidied. Almost every line begins with "And," a piling-up habit that makes the poem feel like one long breath of thought.
The last stanza changes the pattern. Up to now she has liked *it*, the rain. In the final line she says, "I like what I feel." The weather drops out, and what she likes is her own inner state, cold, lonely and uncertain as it is. That is the poem's central idea. The rain was a way into accepting herself. It is a modest ending, not a cure, since the insecurities only "fade" and the rainbow is still unfound. But there is courage in it, because she stops treating her sadness as something to hide.
That is why the poem matters, and why it suits readers your age. It does not tell sadness to go away or promise a bright ending. It shows that you can find company in the world around you, and that liking what you feel, even when it hurts, can be the first step toward feeling better.