Mindy Wilson Photography
sam after the rain
When the first real rain of summer comes, Sam is in the hammock, the skinny white cat she calls Rabbit asleep on her chest, one velvet paw tickling her chin like a buttercup. In the distance, she hears a rumble like a piano being dragged across the attic floor, and she counts just like her daddy taught her — one one thousand, two one thousand — alert for a flash of something dangerous. The wind turns the leaves on the sycamore trees inside out, and the sky, only moments before, a perfect robin’s egg blue, turns the color of a bruise that just won’t quit.
As the storm closes in, Rabbit scurries away like the fraidy cat he is, but Sam is not afraid of the fitful leaves or the yellow green sky. She lies very still, awake to the descending darkness, ignoring her mother’s calls to come inside right now. And when it comes, the rain is cool and kind, making her feel somehow new and improved, different but the same.
A while later, she races into the street, expecting the world to be as changed as she is. Steam rises off the asphalt, still warm beneath her feet, but the only sound is the catch of her own breath. The sky is an otherworldly gray, but the leaves on the sycamores sit quietly on their stems, as if the first real rain of summer had never come.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, pamullman and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
