This weather saps my strength, makes 2 p.m. feel like time to get up, 3 p.m. feel like time to go to bed, nighttime feel like the only natural hours. Steady rain, steady rain, days and days of steady rain. I’m expecting parrots to fly across the streets and giant, bird-eating spiders to catch them in their webs. I’m expecting trees to sprout up like mushrooms everywhere, leaves the size of beach umbrellas overlapping, turning the sky to a thick, dark green. This city is a rain forest, steamy humidity, rivers running in the roads, sun forgotten. I’m expecting little naked men with blow dart guns hiding behind lampposts hunting lizards the size of taxicabs. I’m expecting schools of piranha to flow along the gutters, devouring the ankles of people foolish enough to cross the street. I’m expecting millipedes that really do have a million legs to crawl across my pillow. I’m starting to believe in 40 days and 40 nights, and hope the man building the next arc is of strong-hearted genes. My eyes are drooping, my brain is smudging all of my thoughts, my coffee made me tired. There is no hope! Whoa! Rain, forgive me my sorrow at your presence! I love you, I do! And sky, please don’t tell the rain I’m asking… but won’t you please show me that beautiful face of the sun? Please! Will you undrown me? Will you wake me up and let me live again? Oh, rain, rain, go away. Come on back some other day.