A front has moved in and made itself at home during the last few days. Every road I'm on feels like a back road in
some far off place, a place I'm moving
through to get to where I need to be. Waiting for the drawbridge. Red lights cast
a ghost halo against the black sky. Puddles go on and on. Tail lights always in front of me,
keeping my pace like a runner, with a red baton.
Often, I find myself standing in the lot at work, in the rain, letting it ruin my hair and seep into my clothes. I let it into me, the feeling it brings with it. Saturation. Steady and true. Walking out to my car in bare feet with a laundry basket. Not quite dry clothes strung on hangers all over the place. 8 days of clothing changes rolled up in a sleeping bag. I don't think I've ever been away from New Orleans in the years I've lived here for longer than a weekend at once. Piles of squares of clothes stacked like school books. Shoes curling as they dry.
My last beer and stick of incense to purify the damp air before I leave it alone, hot and churning, for over a week. As always I'll leave my car at work. As always I will head to the airport from work.
When it rains here, it casts the city under a spell of stillness, the moment right before something is supposed to happen frozen in time, hanging there like a flag stopped mid-flap. You stare and stare and wait for movement, and it's all you know to do, all you've learned from experience.