Hunkering down

The clouds bully, fat and lazy, smirking with humidity. They’ve scared off the sun. Not even her halo’s light rim can be seen in the sky. But it’s starting to get darker.The wind rustles the weeds growing from our garage’s rain gutter. Irene’s tip is crossing the city limits of Philadelphia – slowly at 14 mph and we won’t feel anything until tonight. So we’ve been told.
Everyone here is over-preparing – mass amounts of water and bread, milk, eggs, essentials like we’re getting the eye of the storm. But in the end you never know what a hurricane will bring. Even if it is just a wild end strand sweeping over us. We are not NYC or Boston or the Carolina’s. We are safe on the outskirts, our house is high on a hill.
Part of me wants to see what’s she’s made of and look her in the eye. I’ve never experienced a hurricane before and I feel the wildness, the flickering danger of knowing something is coming you can’t control. Yesterday on the news I saw footage of people surfing hurricane winds with their bodies – arms outstretched and leaning into the storm. DO NOT TRY THIS, they said, PEOPLE HAVE DIED DOING THIS. It’s her world and from that point on I knew, she could change gravity if she wanted.
The rain has come suddenly. The asphalt’s rich, wet smell wafts through the balcony windows. A man next door mows his lawn like appearances still matter. When I went to the store, a woman was still arranging flower bouquets.