Mon Ywa Nei Bi

April the hottest scorching month in Myanmar. Its is the peak of hot season. The days are long and tiring. Heat exhaustion can happen in a snap. From the hours of 11-4, you stay indoors hope you have electricity. If not, pray you can find a breeze somewhere. You want to cry from the inescapable heat. You’re afraid to turn on electronics for entertainment for fear of burning its core. You cut your hair short enough its off your neck but long enough to pull back in a bun in a hot season panic. You drink rehydration salts because although you’ve done nothing you’re sitting in your own pile of sweat and your hair is always soaked. The neighborhood is silent for if we are all really still maybe we can keep the heat at bay. 

I know this stillness. I know that Mississippi heat that shrivels your bones and when the sky cries you excitedly dance in its tears. Soaking up the goodness that rain can bring to a scorched earth, body, and mind. But at the height of the heat its as miserable as it sounds. But around this time of year like clock work every year thingyan mon ywa makes its appearance. If only for one evening or two, the sky gets so heavy, the thunder roars, and there is a short release of rain. But it doesn’t come at first. Its teases you about its arrival. You and everyone else want to scream at the sky. Give it up already who are you trying to prove? Maybe its your own frustrations with the hot weather or maybe you don’t like to be teased with the sweet possibility of rain and its relief that will cool the earth of its hot and heavy sadness. 

When it finally rains, it pours. I’m not sure what I’ve grown to love more. The let up of the rain itself or the anxious yet easy anticipations of my neighbors humming along to themselves a tune the Myanmar language lends itself to. The sing song way tonal languages can make words into verses and sentences into poetry. mon ywa nei bi. the rain is coming. a rhythmic exhale of whats to come. Rolling off the tongue you can’t help but smile at how easy but delicate it sounds. And then there’s me sitting on my porch steps my bones feeling every crashing thunder clap, my ears tuned to my neighbors hums, my limbs sluggish in the humidity, my eyes glinting to the kids itching to play in the street after being tucked away in their homes all afternoon, and my heart connected by that same stillness of a big storm rolling in. A season of change. How fitting that the rain coincides with the Myanmar New Year. A hint of a new season to come. A turning point.