Life on Mars?

My dog stands under the awning, staring out into our backyard, sniffing the thick, soupy air. He needs to use his giant bathroom, but he needs to step onto the grass and into the storm to do so. It seems unfair and somehow unnatural that this is the only way for him: he hasn’t been a wolf for millennia. He doesn’t want to get wet, but he needs to pee—I know he does. He hasn’t gone since this morning, and the sun has long past.

The sooner he steps out of the safety of awning, the sooner he can step back into it. But he’s just a baby: smaller than my cats, more spoiled than my sister and I ever were. We call him Bowie, but he’s nowhere near as bold as his namesake. I wish I could tell him to stop delaying the inevitable, but he’s only a dog, and a poorly trained one at that: I say sit, he lies down.

There’s something cowardly about the rain in Florida: the way it pelts you and then runs away. But every May, it turns bitter and relentless, lasting for days, drowning you in the sky when all you want is the sea. My backyard, concave and smooth, is a bowl. Every couple of weeks, the universe fills it with water and the wind stirs. When the rain stops, ducks stop by, swimming in the days it takes for the water to drain. It doesn’t rain here like it does in the rest of the world. And as for us? We drive to pier in the days before a hurricane, and watch the waves strike the shoreline.

I suppose it grows on some people, but I never took to it. I moved from Connecticut to Florida the summer before seventh grade, and in retrospect, that may have marked the end of childhood. I always felt a strange sense of otherness, here. Even when the rain faded, the air never stopped feeling muggy to me. After adolescence in a swamp, I moved away for college. Returned as rarely as possible—only my dog and cats could entice me to return. My dog is now four years old, and I’ve been in college for four years. But he is not my parent’s dog, he’s my dog, too. I never doubted that, and I don’t think he has either. Even when I left every semester. Even then I make him pee outside in the rain.

After four years of frantically pulling away, I’m pulled back. My campus closes, my lease ends. My graduation is a livestream. In another world, I’m riding the Subway home right now. I’m coming home from my job in New York. But the only world I have is this one, and this one is closed. This world is on pause while my life is on play. This world is flooding my backyard and scaring my dog.

Bowie steps out into the storm, finds his spot. After a minute, he runs back inside where I wait by the door with a towel. I drape it over him and start to dry him off while he rolls around on the floor and snorts: we’re playing, now. He’s soaking wet, but he’s alright. He’ll be dry eventually, but he’ll be happy first. And I won’t watch my backyard become a lake forever. I won’t spend this hurricane season watching waves. The world will open, and I will kiss my puppy goodbye. I will abandon murky, oppressive air; I will escape an atmosphere that hurts me. It will keep raining, but I won’t stand under the clouds. I will find a way to leave. I’ve found it before.