A Poem from Little Rock

• It starts to rain

• as I am walking back to my car

• after the bridge.

• Big, thick drops.

• Bolder and louder than where I come from.

• The kind of drops that celebrations are made for.

• They hit the hot pavement with such force

• that small bits of sand leap from the asphalt

• and land in my sandals.

• Gritty on my skin, I walk faster

• and feel the ground steaming around my feet.

• It feels like release,

• like the tears that finally come

• after weeks of welling in the back of your eyes.

• Like an ending.

• I get to my car,

• windshield finally free from weeks of accumulating desert and sun and birdshit.

• Cleansed of the film of dust and grime

• unique to festival parking lots-

• the kind that still smells faintly of pot smoke

• and barbecue

• and the 3am love song that slowly meanders from one key to another

• in soft and affectionate drunkenness,

• searching for its tent in the dark.

• The rain is a reminder,

• familiar and distinctly new,

• that the thread of you cannot be escaped, no matter how far you go.

• Loves form and falter

• Songs are sung

• Old ones die, new ones live

• Everyone is afraid of something.

• It matters a lot.

• And then it doesn’t.