An Imperfect Rainbow

Today I went to a baseball game, and in the fifth inning it began to rain. 

By the time the top of the sixth resumed, a huge rainbow hung over the horizon. 

It was an imperfect rainbow, though. It looked like a polaroid picture fresh from the camera; its colors faint against the blue-gray backdrop. I wanted to shake the sky, anything to develop its hues into a deeper saturation.

But it refused to be bold. 

***

I’ve been wanting to see a rainbow for months.

Last summer, I ran home from dinner through a downpour and later saw on others’ Instagram feeds that the area I had retreated from had been blessed with a huge, brilliant rainbow. From that moment on, I would study the sky after any kind of rainstorm, hoping to find an arc forming among the clouds. 

But these things rarely show up when you are on alert, hoping to find them.

If rainbows are blessings, I prefer to think that they’re always hanging over my skies, reflecting light into color, even if imperceptible or just out of sight.