PAPER RAIN

That’s the school buzzer I hear, a block away, light and fluttery. Just like this pie (rhubarb), just like this coffee (hazelnut). Soon the street’s going to be teeming with kids in crisp, blue uniforms that never seem to get dirty. The three o’clock sun dapples the sidewalk, fading in and out of the sewer, and passing between the gates of the café’s patio. That sidewalk’s burning today and the air is high with flora. That uneven sound of sliding pavement is a skateboard.

It’s the last day. Khaki shorts jaunting across the street, skinny limbs celebrating. They hug the curb and come scuttling at the pace of the easy traffic. Kids chatter to each other in their language as they walk into the café, shuffle in line, briskly order. Their conversation is full of likes and f**k-yous and grins that jump into billowing cups of chai lattes. A boy with a hat hisses as he burns his tongue, pushing at the glass door.

“Hey, wait!” A girl with long split-ends and a pile of papers trots toward him. She reaches out to the boy with the hat, handing him something. He holds it up. It’s an envelope and he opens it with one tanned finger.

Confetti falls on the tiles, paper rain.

“Happy birthday,” she jerks out.

“Hey, thanks!” And he pulls her into a hug.

They jaunt out the door, bell slapping dully behind them, their Chucks smacking the pavement, expensive cups clutched in the same hand like poetry. The girl trips on the curb and her one arm full of paper goes down. That summer breeze picks up and tosses a semester’s worth of returned homework across the street, all over the street. The boy with the hat laughs and takes chase, the girl left stunned and flattered on the curbside.

There is a rumble of thunder in the daylight, and there are way too many English papers, history essays, flitting across the street. The boy picks up handfuls and there’s still at least three more in every direction.

A bus turns the corner too fast, the thunder, and the boy in the hat disappears beneath it, the coffee cup doing wheelies on the pavement. The bus jerks to a stop in the middle of the intersection, the driver crawling out. Then there is a silence that bounces from the tightly knitted buildings and off into oblivion.

Confetti falls on the street, paper rain.

The girl on the curb is hailing god.

The barista is gaping from the counter. Shouldn’t someone call 9-1-1?