THE WEATHER INSIDE ME

 

The sky began to turn grey.

 

Not the romantic grey

poets give to sorrow

when they need sorrow

to look beautiful.

 

This was the grey of unpaid bills,

hospital corridors,

a cup of coffee gone cold

beside a letter

I never had the courage to open.

 

I looked up.

 

The sky looked ordinary.

 

That was the frightening part.

 

Then the trees began to move.

 

Everyone blamed the wind.

 

We always blame the wind.

 

It is easier than asking

why the branches were already broken.

 

A choice is a strange thing.

 

At first

it resembles a door.

 

Only afterwards

do you notice

what it has closed behind you.

 

The leaves began to scatter.

 

Some landed in the gutter.

Some disappeared beneath cars.

One caught against my shoe

and stayed there

as though it knew my name.

 

I did not remove it.

 

There are things

we carry longer

when we pretend

we have forgotten them.

 

The wind grew louder.

 

Or perhaps

I was becoming quieter.

 

I could no longer tell

which of us was moving.

 

Then the first thunder came.

 

I have never trusted thunder.

 

It arrives without evidence,

without explanation,

and makes the past

sound as though it is happening again.

 

For a fraction of a second

I remembered what happened.

 

Then, in the same breath,

I remembered what might have happened.

 

The difference between the two

was only a life.

 

Mine, perhaps.

 

Someone else's.

 

It is difficult to mourn

a future that never existed.

 

There is no grave for it.

 

No flowers.

 

No name carved into stone.

 

Only that occasional sound

inside the chest

when the weather changes.

 

I lit a cigarette.

 

The smoke climbed towards the clouds

as though it knew

where I had been trying to go.

 

I watched it disappear.

 

Perhaps that is what prayer is:

 

a small amount of smoke

sent towards a God

who may or may not be listening.

 

Another thunderclap.

 

I thought of the people

I had loved badly.

 

The ones I left.

 

The ones who left.

 

The ones I lost

without either of us going anywhere.

 

Funny, isn't it?

 

We spend years

learning how to say goodbye

to people who are still alive.

 

The sky darkened.

 

I waited for rain.

 

Not for forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness is an expensive word

and I had very little left to spend.

 

I wanted something simpler.

 

A storm.

 

A clean ending.

 

A reason to believe

that all this pressure

was leading somewhere.

 

But the rain did not come.

 

The trees stopped moving.

 

The street became still.

 

And for the first time

I wondered whether the storm

had ever been above me at all.

 

Perhaps the clouds

were only the shape

my thoughts had taken.

 

Perhaps the wind

was nothing more

than the consequence

of a door I should never have opened.

 

Perhaps the thunder

was the sound

between what happened

and what I still insist

could have happened.

 

Then a drop of water

fell upon my face.

 

I smiled.

 

Another followed.

 

I closed my eyes.

 

For a moment

I could not tell

whether the sky

had finally begun to weep

 

or whether, after all these years,

 

I had finally begun

to rain.

 

enitnatsnoC oãoJ