Hope is seeing light rain through discreet black shutters as the afternoon retires. Hope is watched through the same pane at night, too. Only it has become an old telegraph post’s sodium light.

Despair is too much rain. Debris-covered drains. Pools, saltless with excess summer. Audible drops on cream ceilings that later race down mouldy paint. (None of these things are welcome, by the way. Not one.)

Anxiety lies somewhere in between. It is the doorbell that makes the dog bark. A door answered to a man shaped like an agent, unaffected by the hurried, dry breeze. Such a weathered face.