Expect Rain

Heat from the asphalt curled over my worn sandals as rain spritzed my face and I sidestepped a disintegrating Vienna sausage. Overhead, lightning pulsed inside swollen clouds. Cars screamed down the road, and buses eased up to stops, their worn brakes shrieking—emptying weary passengers with laden bags and drooping eyelids.

I reached up to my earphones and turned up the volume. The world was too loud.

With my hand shoved into a butter-stained bakery bag, my fingers dissected fresh brownies—the melted chocolate caking beneath my nails as I smashed the chunks into my mouth.

The deluge intensified.

Face uplifted, I stopped mid-stride. I could feel the tears coming, roiling up from my gut; I swallowed halfheartedly.

Lean into it.

***

On the patio, soil-bloated canvas planters listed from the intense sun, their green charges an oasis amid the surrounding, heat-rippling gravel and asphalt.

Cracked cherry gold tomatoes dripped from mature vines clinging to Bertie’s roof ladder—the plant’s generic green container nudged by dry, infrequent wind as flies danced across the caving fruit. Pepper plants sprinkled amongst purple delphinium bowed to the heat as I emptied gallons of yellow-tinged water around their bases—corroded pipe flecks swirling at the bottom of the jug. Lavender erupted upward from a misshapen terra cotta pot, and delicate yellow flowers bloomed along the cucumber and Hillbilly tomato stems; nearby, garlic cloves from Seattle resurged: fresh green strands erected sentry-like.

Gnats hovered around my homemade compost bin, converging as I tipped the lid and turned the moist, heated matter—worms wriggling beneath rotting nectarine pits and shattered eggshells.

Hours before, after a Tinder match ghosted me, my new-old car’s Check Engine light flickered on as my temporary tag fluttered in the breeze—reminding me that I was still very much a visitor.

The desert often takes more than it replenishes.

***

Inside Bertie, fans sputtered and JoJo heaved against my side, collapsing into me with labored pants and darting whale-eyes.

She’d yet to acclimate to evening storms.

I rubbed between her ears until her breaths slowed, her tongue inching out: a harbinger of reserved contentment.

Sliding open the dinette window, I exhaled into the curtain-rustling breeze, as the wet air wicked through my curls.

This is a hard, beautiful place.

With my mind far afield, considering all the sudden shifts, I let my eyes swim in the sky’s pink hues as they melted into darkening gray—birthing a storm with symphonic accompaniment.

Punctuated pops.

Carousing cracks.

Jubilant rolls of distant thunder: an expectation of rain.