The breeze is cool, then spattered with chill, then blowing through a flurry of raindrops, then cool again. Varda is curled up at my waist, a rivulet of warmth to balanced out the breeze and sharp book on the other. I'm thinking about getting up and making tea, trying to gauge when cool and breeze will become rainy and paper-destroying.
As I close my eyes, the tea and the rain skim over a sudden memory: drinking water from a fountain in elementary school, a cool, metallic spurt that you have to catch, pressing the button carefully. I'm thirsty, surfing the line between comfortable and drenched. And now more thirsty and Varda is becoming restless as the neighbor dogs whine and the clouds grow closer. It's the kind of Texas day when you know the sun and the heat are lurking just on the other side of high, grey clouds and you're hoping that the clouds stay and withhold the rain for just a few minutes longer.
Perhaps everything is thirsty. Either way, a restless dog is not the best hammock companion and so we end up inside, making tea. Varda likes the part where the ice goes into the pitcher because that means several pieces fly her way.
I'm still thinking about how blank the sky is in the backyard. Lying in the hammock, you don't see tree limbs or telephone wires. Just sky upon sky upon sky, above the ridge of fencing.
An empty view of birds and planes (and clouds or bubbles or firecrackers) zinging from one roof or one spot on the map to another. Today, it tastes like water.
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