by Myna Chang

Promise the rain’ll come. Tell ’em about that time in Wichita. The puddles that shimmered wet under the stars, ’cause it was you that lit their dry night bright. Charge ’em extra for your brilliance. It’s the best they’ve ever seen, or at least, the best they’ve seen lately. That’s gotta be worth something.

Make a show of preppin’ your explosives. Drought’s withered their souls, made them thirsty for miracles, but don’t let ’em crowd too close. No sir, you stand apart like a magician on a stage, like a proper savior, the only one that can tease precious water from their stubborn sky, and you remind ’em, you tell ’em, I’m doin’ this just for you, because they’re worthy, because they paid cash upfront, because they deserve you, and if you say it hard enough, they’ll believe, they’ll feel it, all the way inside the brittle of their bones and then even the salt-sweat sinners will swear they taste moisture in the air, if only for a stutter of their parched hearts.

Once you got ’em hooked? Well, that’s when you consecrate your nitroglycerin and your canvas, kiss it with your hot air and let it fly. Some will ooh at the rising balloon, some will stomp their dusty boots in time with the booms. And you just know one of those cotton-dress girls’ll be looking right at you when the first drops fall.

Myna Chang writes flash and micro. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, and Bending Genres. She has been nominated for Best Microfiction, and she is the winner of the 2020 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction. Read more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.