DROUGHT

As summer ended

My thoughts were consumed by the stagnancy of my life

and these low feelings were compounded by my surroundings

which were giving the signs of inevitable hard-hitting loss

soon

I was feeling especially fragile

and tried reflecting on previous times I’d felt this way and how I moved past it

I came up with a question to try to see it through

DO THINGS GET BETTER OR DO WE GET USED TO THEM AND MOVE ON?

I left myself stumped

I spun this over in my head

up to and during peak foliage

when my coworker Conner rhetorically asked when the last time it had rained

Looking around didn't immediately signal drought

The leaves were the most attractive they would be before falling,

the result of 3 weeks of progressive vibrancy

turning the green hills and mountains into splotches of crimson gold and amber

Except Conner pointed out the waterline

which gave the truth away

Every day the wet spot on the banks of the lake and river grew longer,

the Hudson especially

It looked so shallow compared to usual it gave the impression of a kiddie pool

that you would hurt your ankles on the bottom if you jumped in

It shouldn't have been surprising the following week

when all the leaves fell

and the only colors were shades of dead brown

and the cloudless sky, painfully pale blue

I still managed to be dumbfounded at how quickly I went from being surrounded by Autumn’s beauty

to the blatantness of the DROUGHT

Given the abruptness of the change

It felt easy to attach my dilemma to the period which had just ended

and use the DROUGHT as a separation point,

new chapter, symbolic moving on or an excuse to move on,

maybe

My symbolism was the consistently clear night skies

I was unfamiliar with how cloudless it was,

my most common thought upon seeing it was

 "Where is something like this the norm?"

The clarity felt foreign

I had to take advantage of it,

the difference of the situation,

the clarity,

before the rain came back

In the following weeks, I was able to clearly realize

that life doesn't operate like a narrative

and just cause it stopped raining didn't mean I could just move on from things

or that anything was actually different

I was still stuck at my dead-end job

And everything around me was still signaling death,

Some way some how but undeniably eventual

Consciously, it didn't completely engross me like before

Eventually, the fires came

It got so dry shit would catch at anything

First in Jersey, then the border, until one day it was our own forest

It was small enough that myself and the other seasonals, mostly new hires,

got to go get experienced in a safe way, digging the line and working a hose

Leaving that day, the latest hire, an 18-year-old kid, asked me what I would do if someone died while we

were fighting the fire today, he said he'd use it as an excuse to try and smash,

tell some chick at the bar an honest-to-God sob story

I responded by saying you fighting fires is good enough by itself

if you thought telling a girl something would make her want to go to bed with you

That you could do that without someone dying

But I admitted it was a funny thing to say

The horror when I found out

He passed the next day

Fighting a fire

In the world's most freak accident

I’m still not over how morbid it is

The State was kind enough to send us a counselor to "provide emotional support"

I asked him what the proper way to mourn was

He said it was different for everyone

What I hoped he would say was

"Abandon all obligation

spend a week on your hands and knees in reverence

and lament"

Unfortunately, I maintained my 5 days on 2 days off

When the rain finally came back

I received news of another passing

A mutual friend in Philly

Once again, someone younger than I

Once again, some uncommon unforeseeable thing

One more absence

Only a week later from the first,

I was still mourning albeit passively,

I figured the best thing I could do was keep him in my thoughts

In a sense, I was already in the most optimal position when I got the text telling me

I ran through the common thoughts

This was someone's Son,

someone's Daughter,

someone's teammate,

someone's best friend,

Before processing my own, personal ones

WHEN THE RAIN FINALLY CAME BACK

WE HAD LOST SO MUCH

Was her passing the Last Passing of the Drought Period or the First Passing of what comes next?

Is it disrespectful to think of them this way

I inevitably ended where I started

DO THINGS REALLY GET BETTER OR DO WE JUST MOVE ON?