Summer

Sitting on my back verandah, facing out over the mountains in the darkness. Overhead the sky is grumbling, the wind racing around, exciting the trees as they dance in anticipation. Every few seconds the sky lights up, a massive sheet of lightning in front of me. It has been hot all day - scorching my bare feet as I walked on the bitumen and making my face glow in the humidity. The Monkey's hair a mass of corkscrew spirals around her face. It's coming. Rolling closer and closer and the taste on the breeze is tantalising. My skin prickling with the intensity of what's coming.

I sat in the sun today, improperly leaving my bare skin naked to its rays and didn't care about sun safe messages. Instead I let that warm golden heat penetrate my skin and make me feel awake and alive for the first time in a week. Only for a few moments. I didn't get burned, nor even mildly pink. But I felt the dose of it sparkle through my skin. Needed and wanted.

Tonight, standing under the clothes line as we pulled in washing and watched the sky overhead light up I thought about the hot clear day and the joy of Summer storms. It hasn't been a stormy summer, it's been grey and wet and often cool. And I've missed this build up. The scorching weather. The underwater humidity. The limp hair and the glowing skin. The frisson in the air as the storm builds and builds.

It hasn't broken yet but the wind is so excited. She's calling me out from under my cover here, to come and play outside when it arrives. The trees are shivering as she sings and all around waits in breathless anticipation. The sweet smell of fresh rain, purer than any perfume bathing the air as the seconds between thunder and lightning diminish.

I'm waiting for the proper thunder. The cracks that make you jump out of your skin and tremble just a little. At the top of a very tall ride and waiting to free fall into the exhilaration that follows. I'm waiting for that crack right above my very head that feels as if the sky has ripped and there's a glimpse of some other dimension just for a second. A portal to the land of what if.

My skin is dancing. My eyes have turned gold for the first time in months. Little droplets of gold are running through my veins and I can breathe. Properly. Deep gasping lungfuls of breath. The rain is nearly here and I want to go out and play. Be soaked. Sodden. Cleansed.

I want to be part of the storm.