The Weather Brings Us

It wasn’t long ago
when we were screaming in the night
about who said what
as the rain streaked.

It wasn’t long ago
when we were figments of ourselves,
no longer sure about the subject of our screams
—ghosts in the driveway,
a hillside crumbling…

Sometimes we have to yell and gesture largely
when the storms come.

Sometimes we have to let the clouds fall on us
and sink into the mud
—our hairdos dunked,
our mascara flowing with the dirt.

Let this be our primal therapy
to become the rain,
the hillside,
the mud.

A scream into the huddled trees.

Extending as the rooftops, the thumping leaves,
a thousand dark ravines gathering water…

We don’t know who orchestrated this great simultaneous sobbing into the trenches,
when the dim yards reach saturation and everything spills forth.

We don’t know why when the weather rolls up with a bruise
and splits open
so do we.