The air before a storm goes thick and still and electric to the skin,
and that’s the kind of summer afternoon we’ve been living in,
not the storm itself — the held breath of the hour just before it breaks,
that specific sweet humidity that everything around you makes.
You’re on the other end of the porch and we’ve been out here since two,
with lemonade gone warm and the conversation going slow and true,
and the sky has been piling up its gray and purple to the west,
and neither one of us is talking about what we’re both confessing best.
You shifted in your chair and said it’s going to open up real soon,
and I agreed and watched the light go copper underneath the noon,
that wasn’t there yet, no, the light was something in the low clouds’ edge,
and you tucked your feet up underneath you on the porch and off the ledge.
The first drops hit the railing and you held your hand out flat to catch,
the cold of it on your palm, and I watched you do that — watched you match,
your open hand against the rain like it was something you were answering,
and I thought about your open hand until the thunder finished chattering.
It opened up in full then and we grabbed what we could carry inside,
and you were laughing at the speed of the rain and I was laughing at the tide,
of everything that charged-up afternoon had built in me and stored,
and how the thunder breaking felt like almost something being poured.
We stood inside the screen door watching the whole thing come down hard,
and your shoulder was against mine looking out at the yard,
and the storm was doing all the dramatic work that the evening needed done,
and we were just two people standing in the after-dark before the next one.