By Eli Daniel Ehrenpreis

She brakes suddenly and stares out the driver’s side window.  I assume she is watching something bad such as a tree smashed into a roof from the storm, or a lost dog. Then she climbs out leaving the car in the middle of the street and stands staring at the sky. I follow her eyes upward and then I see the rainbow. 

The colors are clear against the background of grey clouds pushing along as the storm winds are dying down. The rainbow arcs over the across-the-street neighbor’s roof then goes southward over the corner house where a swat team once waited, covers another house where the husband was escorted away and never returned, then at a 120-degree angle, loops past the roof where the lady who talks-too-much lives. Her geriatric husband pulls up the window shades for a closer look.  The prism from the light, now seen through the clouds, passes the window and reflects on their living room floor.

I put the car back in the garage. It’s Sunday, so traffic is insubstantial.  

A group of neighbors from around the block stand on the parkway in front of my place, taking pictures with their cellphones.  

A quiet woman from the east side of the street we don’t see too often crosses to join us. The longitudinal line forming from the apex of the rainbow lands right in the middle of her roof. 

Another neighbor nobody has spoken to in years walks over and addresses the group.

“Let’s stay here and watch the rainbow until it fades.”

“And disappears like me,” says the quiet neighbor, who unfolds a chair.

She says, “I can’t promise rainbows, but I do make good coffee.”

A few onlookers promise to visit sometime.

Then the rainbow light dims, and some in the group decide to leave.  

But most settle down to catch up, long after the evening blooms into a portrait of soft silhouettes.

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Eli Daniel Ehrenpreis started life as a musician and then became a physician, educator, and researcher. He stopped seeing patients after major surgery. He has published many scientific papers and six medical books. His poetry and short stories are published in Reapparition, Pharos, Medicine and Meaning Journal, Hektoen International, Tamarind, 101 Words, and Star 82 Review. He lives with his wife Ana and a little dog named Fili in Skokie, Illinois.