Torrential

The weather writes a poem about itself tonight.

Summer heat trapped beneath a thick haze.

Humidity and fog are dripping down the city’s walls.

Everyone moves restlessly.

ACs run through the night, and the cars roll by slowly, tires sticky on the asphalt.

The sound doesn’t move an inch.

This is the calm ache before the storm.

The moon sits clear and yellow and bright, but the clouds surround the city like mountains to a valley.

Someone smokes a cigar in the alley

and the smell mills with gasoline in the stillness.

The wind took tonight off, and even the river sits still as glass.

Window panes are blurred with condensation.

Heat mingles with cold air sold at high prices as people open and close doors to the street and shoes step from tile to concrete.

Even as people wipe sweat from sticky brows outside,

summer sits so sweet in the eyes of the ones who sleep in ice-cold satin sheets.

Waiting for lightning’s first strike.

And then the downpour.

Rain washes the city once more,

and the breeze wakes the birds and the bees in the trees that sleep beneath the endless heat.

Bird song, released by the torrential rain,

echoed screeches that slip between door frames and under window panes

As humidity finally wanes.

Now sounds are released from the seemingly endless fog

The city’s relieved and breathy sob.