Last time I was under rain,
it was a monsoon, soaking
me and all my laundry hanging
on the roof. Some things follow
a Midwestern girl all her life:
unexpected rain, lousy weathermen,
the instinct to disappear into cornfields.
In India, they name the seasons
by how much water is left
at the end of the day. Here, it is
love with the neighbor boy,
then harvest, the stitching
into small-town life, the ache
of having everywhere to go
and no way to leave. Here,
rain means nothing
except that it’s raining, again.
Because even when we say
tornadoes are a spring disaster,
they keep showing up
all year round. Because
none of our clocks are right,
but we can’t stop looking
at them, and the boy
goes out in the lightning,
will hold out his hands
years after you’ve forgotten
how his palms said stay.
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