Rain is different in the desert.
For starters, there’s a lot less of it.
One can go weeks without so much as a splatter of rain.
The plants shrivel and wilt, retreating into the earth.
The parched dirt rises to float around our ankles and waists, a perpetual haze that clings to the skin, the clothes, the hair.
Everything is dust.
Then, the sky darkens.
The grumbling, pot-bellied clouds creep over the horizon and lurk, teasing the arid earth below until it aches for a sip.
When the clouds finally split, the whole desert trembles with the thud of that first raindrop.
Every torrent starts with a single drop of rain.
And that single drop carves a river that carries us all forward.