There is a new heat in summer, sharper, more savage than before. It happens for several days before we get rain, but there is no cooling down. The air turns thick with humidity, holding onto tension while the sky pours. As a child, I felt a rhythm of build up and relief, the clouds gathering like rising dough and quickly striking, breaking open into a cool, generous storm. The rain now is strained and halting, unsure of itself, unable to release. The heat stays, muggy and oppressive. I recall patterns in the rain where it would fall for days, flooding roads, keeping me home from school. It fell percussively, gently and continuously, the trees able to take the steady flow of water. Now when it rains, it bursts out in confusion, fitful and explosive, so that branches break under the sudden weight of the deluge, power goes out, houses are damaged like they would be in a cyclone. There is no relief in summer anymore. I miss the storms of my childhood, with their fluorescent skies, pink and orange, and their easy, rumbling liberation, predictable as the rhythms of my own body. I ache for that deep, safe connection, as though I have been separated from somebody I love and am lying awake longing to find them again.