Paul Rabinowitz ~ Global Warming

I’m try­ing to find out how you feel about me before the warm­ing of the globe caus­es seas to rise and floods the small coastal town I’ve called home for 30 years and tur­bu­lent waters smash sea­walls and inun­date base­ments caus­ing mold and mildew and a state of emer­gency is declared and you can no longer get to me and I am alone with pump in hand pur­chased when I knew I need­ed to know how you feel about me and want­ed to live a long life and see you often like one looks at the night sky and mar­vels at the stars and all the dis­tant light in the uni­verse when there is no moon or clouds or threat of rain and maybe with the help of this appa­ra­tus I can live a long life or at least one more day and not be drowned by a cat­a­stro­phe brought about by rapid changes in tem­per­a­ture and I strug­gle with this more than you can imag­ine and think about you more than you know and wake in the mid­dle of the night soaked in sweat by a recur­ring dream that I die before I know how you feel about me and with eyes half closed I stum­ble down the stairs to turn on the tele­vi­sion to check the weath­er to be sure there is no chance of rain in the near future or at least for tomor­row and stay awake until morn­ing sucks the remain­ing life from me and walk around dead like won­der­ing how you feel about me until it becomes all too much and one day I pack a suit­case and leave my coastal town that I’ve lived in for 30 years and find a new place on a hill that is dry and far from poten­tial floods and set roots in a stone house far away from any­thing famil­iar and start to breath nor­mal again and rise fresh each morn­ing after dream­less nights and walk out­side in the bright sun­light and mar­vel at the cloud­less sky with no threat of rain and inhale the wild scent of thyme and rose­mary and the thought of storms or flood­ing or even the way you feel about me nev­er cross­es my mind and I return to the stone cot­tage excit­ed for the day and sit at my desk and begin to write a new sto­ry about a man who moves to Jerusalem and lives on a hill over­look­ing the desert where it nev­er rains and sum­mer heat is dry and oppres­sive and every­thing turns brown and dies from lack of water except for the wild thyme and rose­mary that is fra­grant and every­where and all this is new to the man who moved here to be alone and dis­tant from any­thing in his mem­o­ry and far from every­thing in his past and for some rea­son I can not explain in the mid­dle of all this I open the dai­ly paper and read about a bomb on a bus and under­neath the pho­to of the cat­a­stro­phe and ensu­ing firestorm in small print is a sto­ry about one of the vic­tims from a small coastal town who was com­ing to Jerusalem for the first time to sur­prise a friend and I close the paper and walk out of my cot­tage that is high on a hill in the city of sad­ness and won­der when the rains might come and wash the dust from all these stones.

~

Paul Rabinowitz is an author, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and founder of ARTS By The People. Paul’s pho­tog­ra­phy, short fic­tion and poet­ry have appeared in many mag­a­zines and jour­nals includ­ing Burningword, Sacramento Evening Press, The Metaworker, Adirondack Review and oth­ers, and was a fea­tured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020. Paul is the author of Limited Light and The Clay Urn. His short sto­ries are the inspi­ra­tion for 4 short films to be released in 2021 and is writ­ing a tele­vi­sion series with author Erin Jones called Bungalow. https://www.paulrabinowitz.com/