It's a Drought

The dryness makes me anxious, and feel old and cracked like the earth in the park, on the highway. "It's the dryest spring on record," they are saying in the supermarket, and I rub Vaseline onto my hands every night.

The snow is all gone, melted away a month before it's supposed to, and there will be no grass this spring I fear.

I yearn for the dampness, the healthy vitality of the coast. The clouds gather every night but not a single drop is spilled. The poor crops, I think, having no clue what the farmers are feeling. The poor trees I say, as we (along with thousands of others) chop down our dead dehydrated beeches.

"We water our willow every night" said Emily and Serge, and across the province we see people watering their trees to keep them alive. Will the buds turn to dust before they fully open? And I, I who grew up praying for rain to stop, to not flood our house, for some relief against a week-long onslaught of wasteful water from the sky, I am praying for it to come, for the clouds to break, and to wash the curb-high dust away. Everything is gritty and grey, even the sky (especially the sky), and the ceiling fans in the cafe do little good to provide a breath of fresh air; it's so heavy it just hangs there and sticks to our sweaty cheeks. But it's when the sun shines and the blueness is untouched by clouds that our spirits truly groan, for that signals that there is not even a small hope that the rain might come.