California Hills

My body has slept through february, and though march is hours brighter, it is still slow to wake. I cannot run the negligible mile to the ocean. This morning I forced myself there, through the fog, then a slow, pointed drizzle, and finally into a blinding southwest rain. The sound of March precipitation, half-hard and plummeting amplifies the waves and kills any other sound. I hold my fingers in a cage over my eyes to see the high rolling tide as it swept recklessly against clay cliffs.

Sprinting, panting, and sprinting my way home, raindrops snap against the ground and puddles burst into rolling windswept poppy fields. At the door my thighs are shiny with rain and my jacket, soaked, hangs with the despair of a towel pulled from a bathtub.