Lately,
everything feels like a storm coming.
Just yesterday,
I was walking down Main Street
and looking up at these clouds
flying up into themselves
and I tripped on a crack
in the sidewalk,
because I was imagining
the whole town turning
into a war zone.
Then I remembered
that when storms come,
people can get into their cars
or houses
and holding each other,
watch it pass
from behind the safety of windows,
or they can listen to it
through the wall,
the way I did
when I listened to my parents arguing
and sometimes thought
I heard one of them saying
something unimaginably
cruel to the other,
and that seems to take the edge off
all that anxiety
trying to hailstorm my eyes
out of my head,
and the storm,
which at first
seemed like an thermonuclear event
that could peel the flesh off
everything it touched as it strolled by,
seems at worst
like an estranged relative’s
wedding reception
you can’t just make a pit stop at,
where you end up playing
banana phone
with somebody’s dust devil of a kid
who won’t stop breaking wind
and sleeting peas
out of his mouth,
green on your napkin.
It makes me feel
a little more in control,
which means
a little more here,
to learn that
everything I think I know
is usually a smaller
and less urgent version
of what actually is,
and that when I feel held down
and opened up
by a force I can’t see,
I can always precipitate
toward a perspective
where everything I land on
gets watered,
like everything that gets cooled off.
the real subject is always you 