the weather, lately

It’s been that kind of season where you can’t quite tell if the rain is coming or going. Some mornings, the air feels rinsed clean, like the city has been quietly reset overnight. Light slips down the sides of buildings in that soft, forgiving way, as if yesterday’s heaviness has been shelved for now.

The sky keeps changing its mind – clear, then unsure, then something else entirely. You go out with an umbrella and come home with sunburn. Or the other way around. Either way, you carry more than you needed.

There’s a rhythm to things, even when it doesn’t feel like anything’s playing. Some days it’s subtle: a shift in tone, the pause before a reply. Like two currents moving alongside each other, not quite in sync, not drifting apart. They meet, they veer, they circle back. Something keeps them orbiting. Maybe it’s habit. Maybe it’s love. Maybe it’s just how gravity works when no one’s naming it.

Maybe this is how seasons turn. Not all at once, but quietly, sideways. You notice it in the laundry drying a little faster. In the streetlights flicking on a minute later than they did last week. You learn to adjust without saying out loud what’s changed.

Some days feel like soft weather – overcast, but holding. There’s warmth, still, in a shared glance across a room, in a sentence only the two of you would understand. You don’t forget those things. Even when they arrive surrounded by missed cues and quieter silences.

Nothing is broken. But nothing is framed either. The picture’s still leaning against the wall, waiting to be hung. Or maybe it’s already hung, just slightly crooked. And no one’s said anything yet.

The weather has been hard to read. Packing an umbrella anyway.