I keep past lives
in my weather app.
I scroll across each city to see
the places I’ve been, I’ve lived —
and subsequently,
the weather.
Brooklyn, Achham, Merida,
Hanoi, Accra, Moab.
Swipe left, the sky moves
from light to dark, day to night.
Is it raining? How hot?
I see the forecast and return.
..
People say weather is small talk,
a space for surface level chatter.
I see a weather that
wraps up experiences.
I map memories by thickness of air,
the scent of the temperature,
how much it snows
and what my body was doing.
In Brooklyn, I can smell the cold.
When it rains I refuse an umbrella.
Sweat drips to my low back
in the short suede dress
on the 4/5 with broken AC, daily hymns
and a leaking coffee between my thighs.
I wrap myself in itchy blankets in Achham,
bending my body on paper-thin mattresses.
My elbows into my sleeves,
my knees near my throat.
By spring, I fight the dissonance of
relentless heat with piping cups of chai.
We eat hot rice with our callused fingers
next to a hospital immersed in shaky hope.
In Merida, the hot and pudgy air
feels misaligned with the 4:30 sunset
which feels misaligned with white Santas and lights
strung on royal palms and Lebbeck trees.
Sipping Mexican lagers wrapped in paper towels,
we search for every cenote to stay cool.
I wish for something warmer in Hanoi.
I run circles around a small lake in spitting rain
barely able to breathe
through the garbage air.
The streets close to cars and opens its body
to music videos and marches,
ice cream stands and noodle soups.
The egg cracks in the coffee accompanied by mixed nuts.
Accra is a place fractured and beautiful,
a place where I am losing my stories.
I take a deep belly breath before pouring
a shovel of water over my head on a cement floor.
My body shakes, I imagine snaking my skin
against any small drip of warm water.
My breath thins and I dream
of hot tubs and puffy duvets.
I fall in my love with my husband in Moab
on a desert jog where we run out of water.
At dusk we take a side-by-side to the sand dunes.
A sea of stars above, the exhaust warms my legs.
My skin turns red and his a darker brown.
Our dirty bodies meet for the first time,
we don’t care about the trowels
or the sweat — only the plum setting sun.
..
What is it?
That I can the smell air
from places I’ve been,
that if I feel hard enough
I can rub my fingers
around my breath?
What is it?
That I sit in my house
in our cul-de-sac
dreaming of another forecast?
A careless summer
of shorts and long nights
is slipping like sand
between my web of always-cold fingers.
The sunlight and heart light
becomes chilly too quickly.
As summer arrives
and is already ending
I dream of stepping out of airports
into unfamiliar weather systems.
I sit and scroll and feel
the climate of another life.