Storm

I have developed a systematic method of touch. As we lay in bed at night or in the early morning, I choose a different area between the scalp and toes. I experiment with pressure, stroke length, persistence. Sometimes you turn away, or laugh, or cringe and ask, "why?" Others, you unfold towards me, press yourself deeper into my hands.

Rain, responsibility. The storm closed every school in the district, turned off the lights in half our homes, wrenched dead branches from the trees. My windows are gray and bright, and I am pressed behind them, into the white room with its white couch, white book case, white walls. The cat snarls and twitches in her sleep, then noses into my leg with a whimper. Her back legs work short bursts of running, and my limbs also strain against this heavy, sedentary day.

In the evening, the power dies. We go to the windows and look out at the other dark windows all down the block. Only the emergency lights in the hallways of some buildings glow. The Kaiser Permanente sign is the only truly illuminated thing. On the street below, enormous raindrops seem to detonate on the already wet asphalt, their splashes lit by the headlights of oncoming traffic.