Dream

In a hospital, a pool full of swimmers, all in black suits. Glass walls on either side divide the pool from two long, curving hallways.

The good doctor lifts her, sideways, tucks her waist under his arm; she is strong and holds herself straight to keep her right leg, the prosthetic leg, steady. They level it across the pool through the blasted out window at the doctor's brother, who has begun to lob small grenades into the water.

He wouldn't dance with her on a moonlit lawn as live music played, but in the aisles of a drugstore he'd catch her hand. In the aisle between the frozen pizzas and the racks of beer, he spun her around, mouthing the words to some poppy love song airing over the shop's quiet speakers. They smiled and stole kisses in secret aisles, dimly lit fluorescents shining out love.

Did I only dream it rained? The sticking and then the running of a hard rain after months of none, almost for me, as though called by my missing it so.

Not just a rain but a downpour, a deluge like we needed, the land too like a sun scented desert for me, the woods that, eucalyptus and scrub, are not woods enough for me with the ground all dust and never moss.

But even a downpour would never be enough, not here. The trees were fine, and so too the dust. It was me who needed rain, dripping from the boughs they do not have here onto the soft salal and sponging forest floor this land also does not have. One rain is not enough to create a woods so gentle.

The heady rain scent is rare enough here that it is cloying, the land seeming desperate, puddles splashing up too briefly on pavement, only to disappear in hours. As I once disappeared in forest. The dry here is so great it swallows you up like ferns can if you go deep enough, like hills do here, swallowing up the life it holds so briefly and then sucks so fully out of the green covering grass which held the water. The little rain those green blades caught leaches down in the space of a week when the season hits, tips first empty and dry, turning sharp, the hills suck away and days later the grass is dead and dry and dead it crowns those hills they proudly call golden.

Behind her, a car speeds past. Something yelled just as she is passed sharpens with the colliding Doppler waves. She recoils, folding in over her chest as though shot. It's an electrical jolt, a shock in the true sense, though she never made out what they said. It's like this every time: a fast car, some guy, words that make no sense whether they're heard or not, and that little Taser of surprise and horror. A little reminder that she's not safe alone.

A woman with hot pink hair to match her shirt serves a green juice. Asked a question it is like she doesn't hear. Slowly and pleasantly but with no great care the vegetables are selected and jammed lovingly into a processor. The juice tastes terrible. She drinks like bitter medicine trying not to wrinkle her nose. Eventually she is pretty sure she feels better.