rain, three acts

act one

i roll my eyes up at the sky, whispering, just relax. relax, clouds. they hang heavy overhead, tight with water, grumbling as they roll past. i have a headache, sympathy pressure from the leading edge of the storm front pushing against the house.

release your burden, clouds. you have carried this water so far.

act two

i slipped through a break in the clouds, hovering under an awning while the storm releases its third wind. water pools past people's ankles as they scatter across the street.

"it looks like it's brightening up," a woman tells her blind companion. "it's brightning up for sure. this will pass soon."

act three

flash flood alerts explode across everyone's phones, even the one hooked up to the speakers that was playing music. we can all see it; the warehouse windows overlook the river, the skyline, the hills. a blot of grey pulls over us.

i have to bike home in this, i tell my friends. the water reaches my pedals on the downstrokes; it runs off hillsides and makes waterfalls that spill over the sidewalk. i fly through the curtain, eyes and mouth closed, hoping it hasn't washed broken glass my way. but it all smells like sewage, a day of rain filling up the drains and backwashing blackwater along the street.

it's fine, i tell myself. my tetanus shot hasn't expired yet. i'll keep riding and let the fresh rain wash away the dirt.

the skies clear before i get home.

Permalink
21 June 2018 00:21

unfurl

all of a sudden, i realize that the kitchen is dark because the maple that presses in the gap between our house and the neighbors' has exploded from tentative buds. the ground is covered in a sheen of gold dust; the sky glows as late as early evening.

the bricks stay damp even after the sun comes out, while rabbits pluck at the weeds that are trying to get a jump on the season.

i ask myself if i can live without fear, so long as the certainty of another growth period lays ahead.

Permalink
07 May 2018 20:45

summer

i once read a description of the weather here as dithering a one-bit system; in short, we only experience winter or summer, with daily or hourly fluctuations during transitional periods that average out to a more mild season.

today, our house lost power, briefly, and we suspect thousands of air conditioning units simultaneously switching on as the culprit. years ago, my parents and i stayed at a mid-atlantic beach house that similarly lost power during a sudden heat wave, so we decamped to a resort village down the street and pretended to care about luxury fur purses in order to cool off in their emergency generator-fed climate control systems.

year after year, i grow steadily more unhappy with the realization that my neighbors running their air conditioning makes my building hotter. sometimes i walk through alleyways of window units tetrised around each other, each one quivering with the strain of ripping heat out of one side and pushing heat into the other. hot breath, hot breath, in each other's faces. trash drawn in catches thermals and float into the sky; birds pluck them out and tuck those waxy sandwich wrappers into their own nests.

i don't need to read about dystopian nightmares anymore.

Permalink
02 May 2018 22:38

the 110th day of january

the hillside soaks up sunlight, but the mud doesn't warm. a frozen night slowly releases ice as spectators trample the grass, while the upper sliver of moon lazily arcs across the sky. moisture wicks through the bottoms of my shoes, dampening my socks, cooling my feet.

a persistent breeze funnels up the bridge and catches the row of barricades; two of them topple, but the third one somehow stays upright. eerily, it starts scooting uphill onto the course, slowly picking up speed as the barricade marshals stare at it in shock. someone runs off after it, wrestling it out of the wind. the barricade collapses once the wind dies, like strings cut from a puppet. for the rest of the race, each barricade is assigned a human minder to keep it from wandering back onto the course.

this means more barricade marshals have to be dispatched as mobile crowd-control.

Permalink
20 April 2018 16:44

unseasonal

we've crossed mid-april and i still woke to find the house wrapped in a thin sheet of fresh snow; i've been in continual denial about my ability to put away my tights for the season.

i've put off turning over the plots in the yard; a small cup of water sits on the kitchen windowsill nursing some green onion roots. soon, i should think about starting potatoes. it always feels too late. i always start too early.

Permalink
17 April 2018 16:05