I was told that it would be rainy. I would even say that I’d been warned. One could then say I’d failed to heed the warning. “You’re from the desert,” my hypotheticl interlocutor said. “You’re used to the sun.”

“I have blue eyes and I’m very pale, perhaps even translucent. The sun is my enemy,” I said. “And I love it when it rains.”

“You won’t love it,” said he. “You will long for a glimpse of a blue sky, shivering and crawling like a goblin, and it will be denied you. The rain will be your tears. The rain will be eternal.”

“Well, we’ll see,” I said.

And so we have. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Well, it rained once last week, for about a half hour. The grass around my condo has all turned brown. When I was out for my morning walk yesterday, I looked at the brown, dead grass around me and I thought I was back in Tucson. It was a flashback, although of course I wasn’t in Tucson, because it was midmorning and I was outside and my skin wasn’t on fire.

I’ve been told this has been the driest year in Seattle history. People are looking for someone to blame.

I think it might be my fault.

“Pacific Northwest Dries Up,” the headlines will read. “Local man who moved from Tucson quote ‘brought it with him.'”

My bad, guys. Maybe it’ll rain again someday. But maybe not.