The wrong weather

We knew it was about to storm but walked outside anyway, and then just as we arrived at the farthest point—the destination, the little Brain Dead brick and mortar I’ve been wanting to see—and couldn’t see because the guy wasn’t even there—it started, first with wind blowing pollen, then light drops, then big ones—and like clockwork came the sirens, which always make me think of my dad (“it will be raining for less than a minute and the sirens start,” he would always say, and I keep finding him to be right)—and then the downpour, as we’re speeding through the homestretch to the front door. I quietly washed the dishes inside, trees waving violently in the backyard, started dinner while thunder was roaring. What I didn’t say when we first headed out and noticed the oncoming storm was I wanted to get caught in it. I wanted to be out, blocks away, drenched, and running. I wanted to feel it—feel something. Something like freedom or youth.

We didn’t know then that this was the start of five days of rain—solid, steady, and cold. The temperatures dropped thirty degrees and stayed there. I resent having to get out of bed in the morning and by dinnertime, all I can think about is getting back underneath covers. It isn’t ice cream weather anymore. The earlier part of the week—heat and swimming—felt like an old photograph found while cleaning a room.

My hair has doubled in size. I stand in the doorway, holding a hairbrush. “It doesn’t do this in the desert,” I say before I can stop myself. I know he’s tired of hearing about the desert—my hair in the desert and my skin in the desert and how I’m never mold sick in the desert, but we are in the midst of Biblical rains and everyone is morbidly tired and my mind just naturally wanders off to the desert. I have to braid it here. It’s the only way to control this uncontrollable thing.

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