Before the Divorce, a Dry Thunderstorm

Though lightning sections the sky and thunder breaks,

then breaks again, rain will not come. I near the fence,

trash bag in hand, the narrow backyard expanse like the stage

for a school play after the children have long gone. I see

approaching what might be the shapes of horses, or the long,

wind-pressed shadows of trees. This, our shard

of the American dream: a house with a fence, the same

houses and fences on either side. The automatic

sprinklers sputter on, spitting fake rain across flattened

scabs of grass. Tonight, drought is abstraction, a hollow

phrase I cannot grasp. So too is divorce, how we will split

a house. It is small, the TV-lit window just one of many

in the dark, a neighborhood of boat-lights afloat

on what must be a finite sea. The pattern repeats: heat-

lightning, thunder, silence, the sky still stubborn with indigo

clouds. Rain will come, though probably not tonight.

I wait anyway. The thick air hovers just above me.