Smells Like Home

I just went outside to throw the garbage out.  It smells like rain. That happens here about twice a year. It seems funny. In a city that gets so much rain, it almost never smells like it. It's one of the things I miss most about home; the smell of rain. That dry dust, creosote-spiced, heated-asphalt smell of rain.

Maybe because it's been awhile since it's rained; maybe because this crazy, warm summer has baked our fair city into a dried out, husk of itself. Whatever the reason, it's lovely.

And it's just like it happens in Arizona. It clearly hasn't rained at my house, but it's coming. You can smell it on the wind just like you can smell the summer monsoon, moving through the desert, heading your way.

A Poem about being Sad

I miss Tucson.
Arizona.
I miss the warm and dry. I miss the light, the sun.
I miss home.
Tortillas and Eegees.
Gunshots sounding in the night and the mournful sound of the train. Even from miles away you could hear it. Here, the hills and fog blot out the howl of train whistles.
I miss Opal, how she used to be. She's different here. Jodi would say that she's a mirror of me. Maybe she is, she's not happy because I'm not happy.
I miss the things I loved there. Running around Reid park, I forget now how much I complained.
Antigone. I miss so much. A family and friends and work and meaning.
I miss Jodi and Andrea. O Town and Molly and Bailey and Bachus.
Veronica and Matt and Ana.
People who knew me.
I miss my family, terribly,
and the families I created.
I miss the me that used to be, the me that belonged, the me that mattered.
Jilly, Jawahir, Hawo, Noehmi, Rashid, Jorge.
Everything is different and changing, but somehow not me.
I cannot let go of everything I was.
I feel not myself,
I forget myself.
No one knows me who knew me then.
Here, I am blank and new.
I miss the me there,
the me that was full and old.
I miss my friends that even when I was there were gone.
Erin, Tami, Carrie, Arianne, Nikki.
I miss what everything used to be.
Before.