mosquito rain

A pond formed at our yard's tail when the rain got zealous for what seemed to be weeks. It was like an internal organ had liquefied; the smell, the color, and the way everything softened and became unsure.

The kids took a kayak to it, oaring the distance between the fence walls. They took BB guns to it too, raising small splashes as they pierced the surface and the frogs no bigger than their own thumbs. The frogs stopped where they were and released a small dye of red into the pond.

One day the kids even set up tarps and slid in, rashes mounting their skin that night, making it hard to sleep.

As adults, we hadn't risked the ceaseless discomfort of the storm. We ran from the car to the house like it was the heat of battle. We stayed inside. Checked the sump pump and checked the forecast. Made a game out of compiling a list of things we'd do when it all let up. Arcane places to dust, an aerated and fertilized front and back lawn and the machines we'd need to rent for that, feasts with lines charred to their surface, a cold can pressed to our heads after it was all done.

Meanwhile the mosquitoes were laying unseen eggs on every welt of water around us. There was ferocious begetting, with generations generating generations as if it were shift work.

There was no way we could guess at how deep the bond of blood could really be.

In a temporary letup of the rain on day 24, I ran out in my sandals and placed a pile of coal briquettes on the shore, which was now making an attempt at the composite deck we'd built the year before under a singe.

The mosquitoes? I imagined them falling to the yard like a TV station switched off for a night.

And that's it.

I still have no picture in my mind for what happens to their corpses once they've dropped.