Before a Storm

The air heavy. Heat around your skin; radiated like flesh torn or battered. The sky is metallic, dark, bruised with rolling clouds, ready to bleed. Sun there, far away, mendacious. Pushing, squeezing. Can’t pierce the bruises. Shouldn’t be counted. It’s not a sunny disposition.
The earth pants in exhausted billows of cut grass and leaf. The ground sweats.
The world taut.
Something is going to give.