Used to smoke a pack a day,
now it’s just two cigarettes
in the evening time,
when the lady is in the shower
and after the ******
has been smoked.
I sit on the ledge of our patio,
legs stretched out
Exhaling long trails of smoke.
observing
the busy apartment complex.
Mainly blacks & Mexicans
with a dash of Apache Junction
white trash.
Two girls
in their early twenties
sit on a bench in the little courtyard
talking loudly.
gesturing wildly
about some ***** neither can stand.
Purple lightning flashes overhead,
illuminating
the courtyard.
Then it begins to sprinkle
And then it starts to rain.
A woman walks down the stairs from her apartment.
She’s barefoot and smiling,
head tilted up towards the sky,
taking in deep breaths
of the good rain smell.
I imagine she’s been waiting for this.
Waiting on the rain.
In her apartment.
It’s really started coming down.
She couldn’t light her cigarette,
the rain was dropping from everywhere.
Two children
run and skip down the sidewalk
with their mother running close behind.
Her arms, both of them,
full of mail, grocery bags, and a baby,
yellin at her kids,
“hurry, hurry, hurry up. C’mon, the mail is getting wet and I got Netflix
here, *******, move your *****.”
A man in a motorized wheelchair
Emerges from one of the halls
across the courtyard.
I watch his electric chair
buzz by on the sidewalk.
He was going for a full lap
of the place it seemed.
When he passed me, I saw
droplets of rain
breaking on his face and streaming down.
Grinning ear to ear
he winked one eye at me.
made me smile.
This is Arizona.
Rain in the summer is a gift.
Means a lot to us. All of us