Dry

My head turns blue with storms that come
from the sky or from the evening news —
another school shooting, or a mother
whose car is jacked with her baby strapped
in the back. And when that’s not enough,

there is the thunder of the man I loved, who left
sudden, and it rumbles and stutters inside me.
I twirl my hands into wind gusts, and I try
to break it all down. I tell myself that any storm

is only made of raindrops, made of tiny atoms,
the same way a last goodbye is only made
of consonants and vowels. But it swells up
so much bigger, and even the best umbrella

has crevices, is little more than a cloth flamingo
standing on a single, metal leg, feathered upward
turning inside out. And so, I end up wordless

and soaked. My mother told me that at birth
I came out blood-drenched and screaming,
but then I stopped. Learned to be silent.
And soon, I opened my mouth only
to swallow and breathe.

So, on those nights when love goes tornado,
scrapes my life off the map. I let it settle inside
me, twirl my blood, dissolve my bones,
until my puddled heart sinks to the torn-up floor
of me, I stand there the morning after, the sun,

trying to prism its tired light off the shards
and slats that is left of me, and me standing there,
dry and starting to parch, deciding
if it would do any good to rebuild.

Click here to read Francine Witte on the origin of the poem.

Image by Pawel Czerwinski on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

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Francine Witte

Francine Witte is a flash fiction writer and poet, and the author of the flash collection RADIO WATER. Her newest poetry book, Some Distant Pin of Light, has just been published by Cervena Barva Press. Her work has been widely published, and she is a recent recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City. Please visit her website francinewitte.com. She can be found on social media @francinewitte.

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