drout relief.

An Oklahoma summer is inevitably hot. There was that one, once, that was kind of rainy and mild. But most every other summer of my life can be characterized by heat. As my roommate would say, it makes us tougher, heartier people. This summer has really outdone itself.

Walking outside feels much like a slap in the face, and no one can shut up about it. I don't blame them, really, the weather talkers. It's a cliche topic, yes, but this summer's version is also extremely unbelievable. I've been saying "one-hundred and fourteen" out loud because of how outlandish that number as a temperature sounds. It goes without saying that the sky alongside these temperatures has been a sunny one. A cloud here and there, giving the ants roaming about a minute or two sort-of reprieve from the blast of heat blasting their shells. Otherwise, sun.

This is why the gray sky I looked up and witnessed Saturday evening, while tamping espresso, seemed so unbelievable. One-hundred and fourteen has become so commonplace that a storm, cloud covered sky accentuating shaky trees, is fantastical and other worldly. And then the impossible: rain. It started coming down, pouring, beating itself against the concrete like a broken heart, like a lover that keeps it all in bottled up inside itself for so long putting up with so much shit and lies and anguish and hurt, composed on the outside sipping tea and folding napkins until her frame, her insides can no longer physically handle the layers of pain and she lashes out, tearing holes, smashing glass and breaking down everything along her path. That was the rain. The storm breathed a weight of relief like the lover; The temperatures began to fall and we all took in the breeze like it was the first breeze of all our days on Earth.

And then the storm kept pounding and tearing across the landscape with scorn, and it blew gas lines and power lines and uprooted trees.

And it's funny that the things we need, I mean really desperately need are so often the things we aren't prepared for all the while and they slam down relief and confusion and unsettle us. And we scramble to figure out how to deal with no power, no air conditioning, broken stuff, canceled plans, ants in the living room and yet, we remain thankful for the rain.