#alitweather

[epea-pteroenta]

Squall and Static

 “Keep cool,” my head suggests, “It’s none of your business.” The couple in the booth behind me are fighting. Well, he’s berating her, and she tries to raise an objection now and then, but he shouts her down with some profanity and starts in again. I can see their heads in the mirror behind the bar. His cheeks are flushed from having too much to drink, and his eyes are wide and bloodshot. When he yells at her, spittle sprays out of his mouth. She’s scooted back into the far corner of the booth, and sinks a little lower on the bench with each verbal onslaught. It’d been a hot and humid day, the kind that can drain not just your energy, but your spirit and patience. Tempers boil closer to the surface. Sometimes even a small thing can set someone off. He’ll realize how out of line he is any moment, and he’ll apologize. That’s what my head says, still above it all, placid, cold.

The air in the parking lot smelled like ozone and distant mist.

My gut protests. This might have started small, but it’s become something more. Too much more. Airing grievances is one thing, and honesty is important. This isn’t that, this is a verbal beating, more about power than truth. He cuts her off again, this time what he calls her has no respect in it. Without thinking, I turn around and catch his eye. He pauses until his embarrassment only becomes more anger. He flips me off, and my head catches up and turns me back to my drink. Don’t get caught reacting on pride, it says.

The first scattered drops start to fall outside.

She’s crying now, and scooting out of the booth. He grabs her purse and pulls her back. She loses her balance and hits her hip awkwardly on the corner of the table. “Pride!” my gut says, “Stop rationalizing and try to feel something.” My countenance darkens in the mirror as my gut’s heat and influence builds and rises. I turn around again, with my mind clouded.

The sun hides behind the advancing front.

“Let her go.” “I’ll let her go when I want.” “You’ll let her go when she wants.” “Or else what? You gonna do something about it?” “I won’t have to, because you’re going to let her go.” He lets go of the purse, and she grabs it off the table and heads for the door. “Wait!” he calls, “I’ve got something for you.” He stands up, and walks over to her, grabs her arm and slaps her with the back of his hand. I rise, broadening like cumulonimbus, and roll towards him. I twist his grip off her arm and grab his shirt with my other hand, blowing us both out the door into the rain. I let go of him there and his momentum carries him four steps further. As soon as he catches his balance, he raises his fists and runs at me. I step into his advance. His punch hits nothing. There’s a flash of light above us as his temple snaps back from being struck by the heel of my hand. He crumples under a downdraft and hits the ground as it’s shaken by the thunder. I stand in the storm for a few seconds. The water mats my hair, and runs in rivulets down my forearms. I wipe my face and go back inside to return to my seat at the bar.

I left after the storm was over, taking a deep breath of the evening air.

[fantodsdhrit]

Kaju Barfi

Laplace transformation Never mind Fourier series; It's mango chutney With samosas And integral calculus. Rangoli, sparklers and lights, Legends, Rama's homecoming, Ten head quantum portal, Parallelogram, paper lanterns; They all float up. Fireworks mid-October, My country simulates Tarantula nebula.

[jayarrarr]

Objectification

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s just a coffee pot.” He rapped the carafe on the counter twice before replacing it, as if proving some point. “I don’t expect you to understand.” She blew a curl up out of her eyes. It had always been this way. Whenever she met someone she felt something warm toward, she fretted when she’d tell them. She’d waited, with this one. Perhaps too long. She’d tried to play it off as a personal idiosyncrasy, and he’d responded by treating it as such. For awhile, perhaps, he’d even found it endearing. But they’d been living together for four months, and the more familiar she became the more her “personal idiosyncrasies” became less endearing and more grating. She knew this. But she didn’t know how to explain that everything he thought he knew was wrong. “Lina, listen.” He was in her face now. She could feel his jagged breaths fogging up her personal space. “You know I hate it when you get in my face like that.” “Oh my god, but it’s the only way you’ll fucking listen to me,” he said, backing away from her and rinsing the same pot he’d already rinsed three times. “Ralf,” she said through clinched teeth. “His name. Is Ralf.” “Lina. It’s a fucking coffee pot. It doesn’t have a gender. It doesn’t have a name. It’s a fucking thing. It doesn’t feel, it doesn’t have emotions, it doesn’t like some things and dislike others, it doesn’t have preferences or thoughts or -- it’s --” he slammed his hands on the counter. “Maybe you could just accept it, you know? I realize it’s different from your own experience, but maybe you could just -- I don’t know -- give it a chance? The benefit of the doubt?” She got up and walked over to him and put her arms around his waist. He pushed her away and spun around. “When you told me about this shit, I thought it was cute. I thought -- I don’t know what I fucking thought. But I know I didn’t expect you’d be reprimanding me for how I fucking treat inanimate fucking objects.” Carolina slid down the counter to the floor and curled her knees up to her chest. “I knew this was a mistake,” she said. There was a snap, and a thunderclap shuddered through the air outside. The lights flickered twice, then went completely silent. Jacob slid down to the floor beside Carolina and reached for her hand, no sound save the steady static of falling rain. “You angered them,” she said. It thundered again, as if on cue. © 2014 by Jennifer R.R. Mueller

[weltonbmarsland]

Inclement

From a delicate spit of spider web hangs one tiny drop of the downpour, swinging, steadying, contemplating ground far below - suicide. [originally published in "Journeys To The Point - Poetry by Young Australians", 1994, ISBN 0 646 18251 X] Here's soomit from a lifetime ago to contribute to #alitweather. I still recall that I was actually in a rather contented and even happy mood when I wrote this one, looking out my bedroom window at a storm happening in the Victorian-era park that our flat backed onto in Prahran.

[penzerker]

When It Rains It Pours

Here it feels like it is always pouring out.

God's wrath in a steady impotent rain.

I've survived this flood so many times, 

Some compare me to an oak, but if I was

My roots would have drown. I try to tell them. 

To live, pretend like there isn't another storm coming. 

Do everything you can to enjoy the sun you do get

Because when another flood hits, it is sink or swim.