It begins before you notice it —
a darkening of the light,
the world leaning in
to say something quiet.

Then the first drop,
a small percussion
on a leaf that was not
listening for anything.

And then the rest,
the whole argument of it,
the sky deciding
everything at once.

You were somewhere else
before this. A person
with plans. A dry coat.
You were going somewhere.

Now you are only here,
watching water find
the lowest place,
as all things eventually do.

It doesn't ask
if you needed it.
It doesn't care
that you had plans.

That is the grace of it —
that it comes
without consulting you,
and leaves the same way,

and afterward
the world smells like
something remembered
before you were born.

Petrichor, they call it —
the earth exhaling
what it held
in silence all along.