It was June and not summer,
Splashy, muddy, slimy,
wind-kissing roads of Chennai in sight,
I hear, "Jennifer, Jennifer."
Aloysius' wife answers in.
Break - in the movie, I sip my coffee.
Water was rising in the southernmost state of India,
Destruction or development,
Recovery or renovation,
Right words struggled to meet right arms,
Jennifer and Aloysius buffered in the background,
House I was not in was sinking.
I stopped watching snowflakes in the Americas,
Wished for a sun-feast in Kerala,
I lapsed to places sitting at the window pane,
Netflix didn't help the cultural fix.
here, thoughts succumbed, coffee mug dried up.
While uninvited ants,
swept my coffee off the sugarcoat...

The waters rose, and the flood pours
The Spirit stirs, the Soul cannot but sing
The psalmist’s song, for both souls are one
Moved by the same Spirit.

i could spend the rest of my life
crying for you
flood the world over
a time or two

Every song
Every beat
Every one reminds me of you
But they're never true
The more I think
The more they flood
In raging waters of blue
But I no longer
Come to recognize you

A story isn’t a story without the beginning.
A beginning that told us from the start that there was an end,
An end so near that we were not ready.
I was afraid of the cliffhanger that approached quicker than a rolling thunderstorm,
A storm that looked only of dark skies with hopes of a drizzle,
Not a flood.
Our passion died like the fire within that storm,
The drizzle that turned from a downpour into a flood warning into a whirling tornado of unhappiness.
My dear, I wish I could say we were the storm but I was the rain and you were the fire but the thing was,
You saw me coming.
You saw the storm and the rain yet you lit yourself upon a dry Sahara of promises and the secret I do’s we whispered to each other during the night.
That dry, crackled earth turned soft and squishy from the waves of turmoil that rained down onto the surface,
The fire doused with remorse over a lost lover.
You weren’t dead,
You just left without saying goodbye.
The ****** was nothing of a ****** but a steady decline of I love you’s to, “Have a good life,”
To barely talking,
To trailing down a hill to the very end of our story,
Regret.
I regret everything but you, my darling.
The damp earth will grow again and while I may remember the dry Sahara,
I will grow a rainforest of color without you in it.

I remember why it hurts so bad.
The moments from the past, felt stronger then than anything now.
The emotion flowed like a river in a stream that was flooding.
Now I walk through their dried up beds and wonder what they were.
Every once and a while I get pulled down by a flash flood,
But nothing will compare to the old water line.

Her love was like rain,
Falling a million drops at a time
Scattering through the sky.
Her love soothing, calm, wet.
This love not predicted by
forecasts given by weathermen.
Coming when ready.
She often fell without limit.
A huge gulp swallowed without spill.
Her deed readily prepared without haste.
Her love like rain.
Falling drop after drop.
Sincere without shame.
& I the none swimmer,
carried by her flood
& without fear,
I insist that she carry me
where ever she may go

on thursday, march 14, 2019, the streets flooded
our phones even emergency alerted us
we sat in my dorm
and scrolled through photos of the disaster
quiet gasps as seeing parks destroyed
and schools closed for the rest of the week
the snow is far gone
but the flood takes it’s place
the snow still reminding us
it’s not leaving, no, it won’t leave
we turn on a movie
and try to forget
but on sunday i’m driving
fields destroyed
streets and highways still closed
he leaves to go back to school
away from the floods
but only i remain
in the middle of what’s left
what’s never going to leave
the snow is back
the flood froze over