pining for "home"

The cloud creeps up on the setting sun. Stealthy. Slow. The sun is subdued and the evening sky deepens into an unusual dark. The winding summery breeze grows chill while shaking the new leaves on their branches. They look to one another in dismay in the still before waving uncontrollably under the black of cloud. The birds twitter quietly into their wings, hushing their young. Their silence seems to scream to hold on tight. Damp fills the air. The very ground seems to reach it's dry, weathered fingers, beseeching the sky for a sip of rain. I can feel the humid heat, teasing against my hot skin, aching for a drink from the cool moist air. It fills my nose; the smell of stream, the smell of cool, the smell of the utimate sign of summer. The smell of downpour.

The wind rushes through the leaves, the sound loud in the deafening silence from the birds. I hear the clack of giant raindrops, hurled one by one, crashing to the ground. Each drop makes a bullet hole in the dirt and kicks up a minute cloud of dust surrounding the wet. The water soaks into the ground as the dust settles around the crater, waiting for another. The rain splatters cold on my arm, again on my cheek, a third into my hair, sending a shiver down my back. To the west I can feel the change in the air pressure and turn to see the wall of rain heading towards me. The water flowing from the sky blurs the edges of trees in the distance, turns the sky a murky grey. The wind dies for a moment and i can hear the sssshhhhhhh of the rain growing closer.

In a blink I am soaking wet. The huge drops pelting every inch of skin and soaking through my clothes, making puddles into my shoes. I kick them off my feet and stand barefoot in a pool with my arms upstretched welcoming the rain. The water pours like a faucet down my hair, winding into cold rivulets, trickling down between my breasts and soaking into my jeans. The mud grows between my toes, as i turn slowly, churning the water and dirt into dark, sticky muck. Thunder rumbles far overhead, the sound tumbling over the soft contour of the grey- and black-streaked clouds. Branches are tossed about in the wind. Channels of water run through the cracked earth. Lightening flashes briefly throwing shadows into the mud and I dance jubilantly in the dark to the beat of the summer storm.

The drought has broken.