With my forehead pressed to hers I can feel her thunder building
She is still a natural disaster Beautiful and dangerous
I know some things you can’t control Like who comes and who stays Or the moments you do everything you can not to cry And you burst like a balloon Caught in the rain
I speak a story into her mouth About a boy living in a hospital who wouldn’t let go
So a woman came to see him The doctors called her a specialist
She was dressed in A calm riptide
It ****** the air outa the room But begged everyone to stay And drown
She rubbed his hands
Rubbed his boney kneecaps
With her index finger She ran circles over the giant bump in his chest
The chemo goes there?
The boy nods his head She asks him to close his eyes
He is seven Already has grown in his adult teeth because his child’s ones have fallen out
He smiles like a man
I want you to imagine You are jumping on this bed
She pats the bed Her riptide coats his skin
He imagines it
Now imagine you’ve jumped to your own bed at home You jump so high
Now you’re on your parent’s bed
You’ve been jumping for a long time You’ve been jumping for seven years It will be your birthday soon You can’t jump much longer
So you jump off You jump off
The boy falls asleep
I tell her I slept for two days before I woke again
Nature does not take orders
I tell the rain beneath her eyes To fall warm, wet and heavy I rub it away with my thumbs
There will be days when tears aren’t enough To wash things away
You need a riptide You need a flash flood You need a natural disaster as beautiful as yourself To make the dam break its promise To never let you flood again
Sometimes even god needs to be a liar In order to rebuild
You need to be helpless Then when all hope is lost
You need to accept You’re going to survive this
If only to prove that you can
First line donated by Nicole (Lady) Adams. It is a sem-follow up poem to You Must be Raining Again.