you used to come by November — Steamboat Springs CO

I'm the north-facing slopes above nine thousand feet. You were cold, heavy, the kind who shows up early and stays through April. This year you barely came at all. I'm at the lowest anyone's measured me since they started keeping records. Fifty-five percent of what I should be. I was wearing almost nothing.

It's been in the eighties all week and I can feel myself going. I kept thinking you'd come late. Big March storm. Something. You would've recognized me. I was the one still here, barely.

me: the record, since 1879 — downtown Los Angeles

I've held this spot a hundred and forty-seven years. Ninety-nine degrees. I was wearing 1879 like a coat nobody could take off me.

You came through Tuesday in March. You were the strongest ridge ever measured over the Southwest this time of year. You didn't even look at me. Just walked past like I was furniture. I stood there watching you keep going toward Phoenix, toward a hundred and six, toward places that won't hit those numbers until May in a normal year.

I just want you to know someone was here first.

I know I'm early — Colorado Front Range

Me: fire season. Brown grass, dry brush, the smell before smoke. I don't usually look like this until late June.

But the snowpack is the worst on record and everything's already curing and I couldn't wait. The fire prevention people say I look like 2012 and 2020. The years with the biggest fires and the most destructive fires in Colorado history. They told people to brace.

I was looking for June. She's not here yet. I came anyway.

leaving earlier than I said I would — Truckee CA

I said April. Peak around the first, melt slow through June, feed the rivers all summer. That was the deal. I was wearing sixty-eight percent of what I should've been and losing a percent of myself a day.

The snow lab says I could be gone by early April. Five weeks early. It's in the sixties and seventies up here. Even the summit of Whitney is above freezing.

If June asks where I went, tell her I tried to wait.

you, on the bank in shorts — Glenwood Springs CO

You were standing there in a t-shirt. Close to a hundred degrees on the trail. You looked at me like I'd feel good.

I'm snowmelt. I'm lethally cold and moving fast, faster than I should be in March, because everything above me is coming down at once. The NWS put out warnings for heat stroke and hypothermia on the same day. Same stretch of river. They meant me.

I know what I look like. I look like relief. Please don't come in.

I had room for you — Oroville CA

I have to keep room for flood control this time of year in case of a late storm. That's what I was wearing: half-capacity, arms open but braced, space I'm required to hold empty. I can't just take everything you're sending me.

You showed up in March doing what you usually do in May. Nobody's seen a melt like this. You came early and fast and I watched most of you go right past me to the sea.

I could've held all of you. Just not in March.

I felt you start to come through — Fresno CA

Nobody writes missed connections about aquifers. But I was here.

Late February, I felt snowmelt beginning to filter down. Slow, the way it's supposed to be. I've been waiting years for a good recharge. Then it got hot and everything came down too fast and the ground was too dry and the melt soaked into the topsoil or evaporated before it reached me. I felt you start to arrive and then you stopped.

I'm lower than I used to be. The ground above me is sinking. If you're out there, I'm still here.

I keep checking — Page AZ

I was full once. You probably don't remember. I was blue all the way to the canyon walls, deep enough to swallow the old river whole. Now I'm a quarter of what I was. White ring around my neck like a bathtub nobody's filled in years. Marinas sitting on dry ground. I'm wearing sandstone that hasn't seen air since the dam went in.

They told me in February how much was coming. Then the heat arrived and the forecast dropped. Then again. Every update, less of you. By December I might drop below where the turbines can reach and the lights go out for everyone downstream.

I keep looking for you across the basin. You're less every time.

— Everywhere West

Drinking water. I don't usually post.

If anyone sees June, I'll be here.