Any town with its sky like other skies
could imagine a rain on Main Street,
and above its hardware store the woman
in her rented room, behind the window
that blooms with water and pulses alive
with the gas station’s neon sign.
Easy to believe in fingers tracing
her wrists like rain kissing glass
or climbing her hair to the secret
of her ears, the trembling tender
of breath giving voice to shivers.
So much the sky delivers, this gift
of impossible things, heartbeat of light,
cadence of rain, the breath at her neck.

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Todd Heldt is a writer and librarian in Chicago.