Baler, waiting
Street-level archive image, Baler, Aurora, May 2019.
A storm was coming. I went — the way I go — to Baler, the town on Luzon's Pacific coast where typhoons first make landfall. The street archive held one lane there: walls on both sides, the road empty, the sea a far sliver on the left, the sky old steel.
The sea goes flat. The road empties. The sky turns old steel. Every town that gets hit knows this stillness by name. The calm before landfall is the sound of everything listening.
The rain log, one of five.