Rain is coming

It's past midnight and I lie here in bed, not sleeping yet,
drowsily drinking in the sounds of this city that never sleeps, only rests.
There's a faint purring of a generator somewhere near, but far away enough.
Cars go by in the night, their wild hoots echoing emptily around the construction site,
deserted and forlorn in the darkness.
The wooden blinds rattle suddenly against the open window frame as a gust of wind slips through, surprisingly chilly on my bare, humid-sticky skin.

Rain is coming.
I can smell it, scentless, the welcome moisture driving away a week's worth
of dust and dreariness.
I can feel it, formless, the saltiness of cool viscid air spilling through the openings into this undisturbed space.

I lie on my side, shoulder and hip sinking into the firm yielding of the mattress beneath, limbs draped around a bunched-up duvet like a bolster, a lover.

Around my face, tendrils of hair stir faintly in the milky darkness. I start
as the blinds clatter again, insistently this time, and
for a brief moment in the splintered silence it sounds like someone trying to climb in.

And then she comes, stealthily at first like a car sweeping past in the distance, and then
steadily, steadily, melding with the humming of the generator,
drowning out the sounds of the world outside.

I slip into a dreamless, watery sleep.