I am sister to the rain.
~Dorothy Parker, “Rainy Night,” 1925

For years we scanned horizon, touched on desiccated things.
I tried to give a little limestone. You offered back a sky

devoid of cloud. Hummock, husk. A dry hill. For a time,
we swallowed powdered milk, tried to whisper to the walls

we were not water sisters. We tried gifting yellow grasses,
cacti, cracks. In the dust, we wrote each others’ names.

Our elbows, pinched, retained their ridges. Soon, the open
mouths of reservoirs silted, empty. Riverbeds forgot they

had held water, renamed themselves. In the city, sidewalks
hoarded refuse, cardboard boxes, the stench of urine.

Apologies, reunions, elopements, funerals. No one could cry
and every faucet ran with sand. Yet yesterday, when you called

and named the desert, clouds returned, and it began to rain.
We held the telephone receiver of our childhood stretched

across the continent till it worded into watering can. Oxalis
and trout lilies sprouted everywhere. I could not stop

singing. That night, I slept inside the wind, silvered with rain.
I woke to deeper green. Across a water color sky, the cry

of barred owl by the pond. In the trees a deer lifted up
its eyes from where it drank, and knew me.

*

Alison Hurwitz (she/her), alisonhurwitz.com, is a former cellist and dancer who finds music in language. Her work has been featured in SWWIM, Vox Populi, South Dakota Review, Sky Island Journal, and others. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Alison hosts a monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Her chapbook, Undersight, (Bottlecap Press, 2026), is available now. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings, takes long walks in the woods with her dog, and dances in her kitchen.