Kansas City is in a stage D4 exceptional drought. I've never seen anything like it. The ground has cracked, just like in my daughter's picture book about Africa. The grass has gone dormant, the color of straw, prickly. This grass hurts bare feet. For the first time in my life, I've been watering the birds by leaving out trays of liquid. Some of the trees have gone fuck it and dropped dead leaves on the hay-grass, lending August the appearance of October even as the heat still shimmers on the pavement.

It's been a summer of dry heat, unusual for Missouri. Summers here usually feel like walking around with a wet washcloth stuck to your body. This heat sucks the moisture from my nasal passages instead of clogging them with thick air. When I emerge from the swimming pool or lake, the water evaporates within minutes, the wind thirsty for what clings to my skin.

I have spent the summer vascillating between internal panic about end-of-days weather and reminding myself draughts have happened before. In 1936. The copyright on my yellowed paperback of The Grapes of Wrath is 1939.

I asked my father if the dust would come. He said no, farm practices have changed, but this is the kind of weather that would do it.

Yesterday while I was working I heard a loud motor outside. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I went to look. The neighbor who has been watering his lawn had a lawn service come. And I realized that no one on my street has mowed their lawns since June, because the grass will not grow. It's sleeping.

This week, for the first time in months, the temperatures have dropped enough to open the windows in the mornings. Petunia hovers on her chair, her whiskers pressed against the screen. But it does not rain. 

I'm waiting for it to rain.