Parched.
Parched and cracked.
She could hear it in every crunched step as she hurried through the deserted streets. Her worn-through shoes kicked up clouds of dirt as she cut across the ancient ruins of a corn field.
Dirt. Seems to be the only thing that grows here anymore.
The rain had long since gone – clouds had not graced their unforgiving sky in years. There was no hope for them there. Only hunger. Only harsh sun beating on backs forever bent to the soil.
The days were difficult and far too long. The few who remained had grown hard and tired like the earth around them. She had tried to make them leave. Pleaded. Begged on calloused hands and knees.
They would not listen. They would not leave the land that their ancestors had tilled and worked and harvested for hundreds of years. This was their home. This was where they belonged. If the drought killed them, so be it. Just bury them in the cemetery next to the dried up river.
They stayed. They dug deep wells. They planted desolate gardens. They scrounged and gathered. When the plants were gone, they ate the weeds.
The dirt caked onto her skin and hair and under her fingernails. It seemed to be inches deep now. Like a part of her. A new layer of skin. It gave the people an eerie similarity to the land.
She had a flower garden once. She sold sunflowers and pansies in the market. There was an old man, with thick glasses and kind eyes, who visited her stand every day to buy one single white rose for his wife. They left with the rain and she often wondered what became of them.
The time came when her father told her, tears on both their cheeks, that water would have to be rationed. Water must not be used on anything unessential to life. No more selling flowers in the market. No more saving the best of the daisies for the kitchen table. No more serene mornings spent tending the flowers as they touched her soul. No more flowers.
She knew her father understood it was a sacrifice. She wasn’t sure he understood just how much.
The rain will come, she told herself. It was a sort of silent prayer they all sent up millions of times each day. They prayed it when the final two wells with water began to dry up. They prayed it when they couldn’t dig any deeper.
She prayed it and doubted and believed all at once. It was hard not to doubt when each new day ended without a single drop, without a single hint of clouds. And yet there was an unquenchable hope, a burning desire to truly live, that made it impossible to stop believing rain would once again fall.
The rain will come. She prayed it and dug and scavenged and attempted to keep the dirt from taking over every inch of their home. She prayed it and banged out the carpets and used dirty rags to dust the tables and chairs.
She prayed it as she carried her worn and aching body to bed each night. She prayed it as she slept and dreamed of flowers.
Her mother shook her awake. It was too early. She was too tired. She wanted to go back to sleep where the flowers were. Her mother continued to scream and shake and cry.
“There’s rain! Wake up! It’s raining!”
Rain. Rain!
She jumped out of bed and rushed to the door, dream flowers forgotten, knocking over a chair or two in her hurry, in her thirst for rain.
Her bare toes squished in the damp soil as she joined her people in the rain.
It was a downpour. Big drops that seemed to be racing each other to the ground.
She cupped her dirty hands, let them fill, and raised them to her parched lips. She drank and refilled her hands and drank.
With her thirst quenched, she stretched out her arms, lifted her face to the sky and let the rain wash her clean. The dirt and water mixed and ran like little rivers down her skin. It felt like being reborn.
And as she stood there, the rain making her new, she remembered something old. Something her grandmother used to say when she was a little girl and rain was taken for granted. Something that had once been a part of her, but long since forgotten. Something buried deep in her heart like the old books stacked in the dark corner of the attic.
God is in the rain.
whimsical impressions 
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