Barometer Recalls Old Storms

What if the barometer's needle doesn't predict the storm ahead, but remembers one long past. Each fall through the glass isn't foresight; it's recall, mercury sinking the same low inch it sank the day the roof lifted off the Hendricks barn in '58. The instrument was there. It watched. Now every dip is rehearsal, the glass replaying its one true storm, dressed each time in new clouds to keep the household believing in prophecy. The family checks it before hanging laundry, before driving the pass, never guessing they consult a diary, not a forecast. And what if, someday, the needle finds no more low to fall to, having exhausted every storm it ever witnessed. Then it will simply stop, hovering at fair, and the sky, ignored, will do exactly as it pleases.