Afterwards

Nights they break into our deepest sleep. A crack overhead makes us jump. Those summer storms.

Glimpsing behind the curtain into the garden, we see the insistent gigantic drops splashing on the ground, churning soil to mud, blackening our carefully tended flowers. Then the drops merging to become a sheet, a waterfall, nothing like rain. The backdrop of trees becomes a rainforest, deeply green. Faraway rumbles send a drummed message that miles away the storm is circling, maybe to return with another unexpected flash and smack against the house that sends you running around, checking – is all the electrical equipment turned off? Are all the windows closed?

No, rip open the windows or even the door and run out into the wet, soaking world. Arms open, head tipped back, taste the raindrops on your tongue. But you don’t; too timid. Instead, you crawl back under the bedcovers and listen as the sound gets softer and slowly lulls you back into sleep.

Then in the morning, a new freshly-born feeling awaits you. On the bike you notice the smells of the day waking. Doors open onto the washed street. The smell of dough being kneaded in the pizzeria. The sharpness of bitumen of a newly-laid road, the workers laughing in the steam. Trees in the parks and lining the roads giving off a steamy, leafy odour.

The sun is still there behind a cool wind, waiting for its moment to return and bake the concrete. But for now the breeze is on my shoulders, still bare from dressing the same as the sweltering day before. Today will surely bring the heat back to send us clambering for our fans and jumping into pools. Perhaps it will brew us yet another storm, another night of broken sleep, another new beginning.