♪ Currently playing ♪: Antonio Vivaldi’s Storm.

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A few days later I am greeted by a storm,

brief but bright with furious winds and lashing rain.

The kind that blows in crooked to sting shut the eyes.

Enough to soak one’s clothes to a second skin.

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It is everything I can do to seek shelter.

When the toxic sands get stirred, you can choke

on that stuff.

 

So here I stand sopping, bedraggled in an old arcade speared through with wrought iron. The once blinking, flashhappy screens breathing dust and fiberglass. Motes shift and settle again like phantoms and I wait for the dark clouds to scatter and part.

 

Watch clocks waltzing across the walls and shadows slowdancing.

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            Rain feels cleansing but it isn’t.

 

Nothing ever gets cleansed.

 

We wear dirt on the inside where nothing blooms.

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Nothing pretty, at the very least.

 

                                                         Weeds, ivies, cockleburs . . .

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