I tell the rain beneath her eyes
A story I know

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