Two Lone Voices

Aubrey Lozano-Cofield

__________

It’s the rain after five years of drought in Texas. The water stitches up the cracked earth and I don’t want to disturb it. I want it to know it’s welcome, that the South is thirsty.

“Can you taste the salt?!” she asks me, she speaks first.

All I taste is the way it smells outside, like wet grass.

She stomps on the ground sending her body in circles. Her arms extended, she’s spinning, drinking the rain in her bell-bottoms with sewed on patches of pop-culture, an oversized white tshirt. I’m there, too.

“Can you? Can you taste the salt?!” 
“Yes! I can taste it! It’s just like the ocean, isn’t it?” I say aloud. 
“Ahhh, yes, the sea waters us and like plants we’ll grow!” 

Yesterday she laid in bed not sleeping, motionless awake, all day. Her happiness makes me wonder when it will end. When will the rain stop tasting like salt? What length of time do we have? She’s not like rain in the middle of a drought. She’s like somewhere tropical, somewhere that rains while it’s sunny, somewhere with cyclones and then perfect weather the next day. Somewhere people want to be until it’s dangerous.

I stayed because, who else? Because I love her entirely, because I’m…because what am I?

“Our stomping is making a little lake!” 
“A lake?” all I see is mud, a patch where grass won’t grow for months. “Ah, yes, a muddy lake!” 
“Woohoo!” 
“Woohoo, it’s rain!”
“I’m so glad you joined me.” 
“You asked me to.”
“But you didn’t have to.” 
“Yea, you’re right! It’s getting cold isn’t it?” 
“I can’t feel a thing.”
“Yea, me neither.”

__________

Aubrey Lozano-Cofield has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens University of Charlotte. She lives just north of Austin, TX where she teaches creative writing through The Austin Public Library and Great Minds Learning Community. Aubrey is a daydreamer and seeker of all things wild. You can find more of her work by visiting her website aubreylozanocofield.com.

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