suspense

It is the way the air tastes that alerts me.

Clouds are no predictor of rain or storms.

But that heavy, ozone-laden weight on my tongue is seldom wrong.

Good stories have that taste, too.

Before the storm, before the water or the wind, the words start to feel heavier.

While there are freak showers, spot lightning, most storms send notice of their passage.

I love that moment when the air is sizzling, when the bottom of my stomach drops, because I can feel what is about to come.

Storms can be terrifying as well as beautiful.

But when I stand in the noise and the flood, I can connect the moments.

There is nothing like the flavour of disruption.

The taste of rain.

The storm to come

There are only so many ways you can explain why you are carrying a hacksaw, a thermometer, and a shovel.

I didn’t even try.

If I saw anyone watching me while I was trying to keep the sawteeth away from my legs, I would cheerfully wave my thermometer at them.

Or maybe that was the hacksaw.

What story have I told you?

A trailed off voice, an uncomfortable silence, a flash of light in the darkness.

What we don’t say tells as much of a story as what we do.

I have had a life filled with moments of strangeness.

I honor them by letting them stand on their own.

These stories within stories, these moments with neither end nor beginning, appear and disappear within writing.

We are all story-tellers at heart.

Taking these threads I have given, you have told yourself something.

As I approach in the darkness, thermometer flashing, I will tell you that your story is better, a less boring explanation.

I will walk off, juggling my hacksaw, into an unknown future.

A boring explanation

Cat Amesbury