At the Weather Repair Shop

Morning arrives in cardboard boxes, each cloud folded like hospital linen. We shake out thunder over metal tables, and pin torn rain to maps of the city.

An old woman brings us a February wind that forgot how to leave her porch. We warm it with kettle steam and violin varnish until it remembers pine and long roads.

By noon, apprentices polish hailstones to clear marbles that hold small suns. In the back room, someone mends a drought with buckets of shadow and crushed mint.

At dusk we reopen the sky above the rooftops; patched blue lifts like a held breath. People step outside and tilt their faces upward, as if forgiveness were finally falling.