Tonight, I lie on my bed on my stomach, spread across the width of my queen-sized mattress so that my face can feel the breeze of a desert storm from the open window.
It smells like dirt and the neighbor's front porch light glistens in the rain-streaked glass. My phone and book are pushed away as I listen, as if each drop hitting pavement calls out for my undivided attention. A car passes by like a wave. I close my eyes to hear it better.
I never understood the fascination with ocean waves. Maybe this unexpectedly cool, wet suburban street is my ocean. A steady drip from the roof reminds of my time as a percussionist for middle school band. Keeping time as the music played all around me.
I try to take a snapshot of this moment. Can you take a auditory snapshot? I had an ear worm all day today. I sang the same line of a Noah Kahan song. Maybe I can hold nature's symphony just like that to play again and again.
"If you like rain so much, why don't you live in Seattle or Florida?" someone once asked me. But I never loved rain until I met Arizona rain. Not a rain that comes to stay and soaks into the soil and leaves lawns wet. But instead a rain that seems to just be passing through. A friend with a melodic laugh and a wild heart. She brings reprieve from the heat for a moment and then dances away, leaving no trace by morning, or maybe just her muddy prints all over my car.
