19 days before

The sky has not lightened since
early this morning, dark clouds
a protecting screen around my window.
Through the glass, I can smell the rain
and the dust that blows in every storm
from across the reservation behind my neighborhood.

I tug on musty smelling clothes,
humidity clinging to my skin,
and slide my car out the garage,
let it glide down the rainy streets and
leave a light mist behind.

The grocery store is cold and dry
on the inside. Two cans of tomato soup,
walk to the aisle in the back, a wall of
shining cans and a line of
elderly people, then to dairy
to find a package of cheese- or
something like it.

I find the line of my favorite cashier,
even though I'm caught behind two men
probably early in their eleven-hundreds.
He winks at me as we wait for them
to clear the line, finish slowly slipping
each receipt into its proper place in
their wallets.

I take a moment to examine
the tattoos that run down his arms,
even though I know I'm never able to figure out
exactly what the words say. He's odd to
look at, shorter than I am but wiry,
with sharp brown eyes and spiky black hair.
He calls me 'dear' as if he's my grandfather,
asks me if I'm making some odd kind of cheesey soup,
and I smile and say, something like that.

I take the long way home, through the nook of
little farmhouses that hide between my suburbs
and the long expanse of fields and mountains behind them.

Trees line the streets here, shading
a cattle farm on one side and a tiny
collection of goat farms on the other.
The baby calves soak in the rain, running to
the fence to watch me drive past.
The sky is rich with a lavender tint
and the fields glow bright green against the greyness
of the morning.