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