Writing: Before the Sky Breaks

The sky had settled into its deepest blue, the kind that comes just after sunset, just before rain. That color wasn’t really blue anymore—it was bruised indigo, stained with the heaviness of low-hanging clouds, and so thick it seemed to carry weight. Like the whole sky might drop if someone spoke too loudly.

She didn’t speak.

Her steps were steady on the cracked sidewalk, each one soft and deliberate, as if she was walking not to arrive anywhere, but simply because her body needed to move. The road beside her was empty, and had been for some time. No hum of tires, no glow of headlights. Just that stretch of blacktop running parallel to her, and the thicket of overgrown grass curling at its edges, breathing slightly in the wind.

The breeze had a sharpness to it, but not the kind that sent her reaching for sleeves. It skimmed across her bare arms and raised goosebumps like soft warning signs, but she welcomed it. There was something in the way it found her skin—like it knew where she was tender and meant only to soothe. Like it could pull the heat out of her, the anxious, red-hot ache of whatever she couldn’t say aloud. That wind moved through her like water over stone. Cooling. Cleansing. Maybe even kind.

And there was something in her that was tired of hurting.

The air was thick with that unmistakable scent—of storm on the edge of arrival. Petrichor and promise. It tasted like the earth remembered how to breathe and was just starting to exhale again. Every inhale she took was slow, purposeful, as if there were something sacred in simply drawing breath under this sky.

A cricket called out somewhere in the grass ahead. The sound was uneven, like it hadn’t quite made up its mind to sing. A bird answered from the low boughs of a tree just above, then took flight—one swift, silvery motion—and disappeared into the canopy, leaving only the echo of its wingbeat behind.

She walked on.

The houses on either side of the street were mostly dark, spaced far enough apart that they felt like islands, quiet and self-contained. There were no porch lights to guide her. Only the thin wash of ambient twilight left behind by a sun that had already slipped away.

And still, the rain held back.

There was something holy about that—this waiting, this not-quite-yet quality of the evening. As though even the weather was holding its breath. As though the world understood that some things need a pause. A breath. A stillness between the noise.

Under another tree, she slowed, sensing how the space shifted. The air here was thicker, holding more moisture, more hush. The leaves above barely moved, weighed down by their own fullness. The tree felt like a threshold, and for a moment she stood inside its shadow, head tilted, arms loose at her sides, listening.

No answers came.

But also—no questions pressed in.

Her shoulders softened. Her jaw unclenched. Something in her chest—a knot, a tangle, a fire gone too long untended—began to cool, just enough to notice. Just enough to name.

Not peace, exactly. But relief.

The road stretched out before her, quiet and familiar in the way forgotten paths can be. She didn’t think about turning around. She didn’t think about where she’d end up. She just kept walking. Letting the breeze comb through her hair. Letting her heart slow to the rhythm of her feet. Letting herself be alive inside this single, fleeting moment.

The first raindrop landed on her arm.

She looked down—not startled, just present—and watched the water sink into her skin like ink.

Above her, the clouds finally gave in.

But she didn’t flinch.

She let it fall.