The Rain That Never Arrived

The forecast said rain this morning — forty percent, it said, like a promise it might be too shy to keep. So I waited by my window with the umbrella leaning in the corner, and Tsurumi just kept breathing that thick September heat, thirty degrees with no wind, the whole city sitting in a haze like it hadn't decided what mood it was in.

But here's the thing about rain that doesn't come: it leaves a different kind of wet behind. A waiting-in-your-chest kind.

I carried the umbrella I didn't need. I forgot the rain I almost had.

Clouds are stacking up over the south now, slow and patient. It'll come — the weatherman said so twice. By then I'll have finished these notes, and I'll just watch it from the window like it's something I'm allowing.