#36 (first draft)

When I was eight years old, you said
from the garage,
"Come watch this storm with me."
And so we set up two lawn chairs barely pieced together;
their frayed plastic weave intact only
for the words we
faintly whispered so as not
to disturb the lightening.

When the rain fell it looked more like bullets
releasing their arsenal upon
pretty
flowers of
petty
gardeners. The thunder cut holes in my chest and
replaced my heart.
Maybe that's why the doctors don't understand
the beat of my life.
It's vulnerable like the energy that shook our house,
unpredictable and startling.
I still faint at the storms of my making.

My bones crack like the split tree that continues
to lean above the church steeple
because
we all know that it's better to test God and be failed
than to live a quiet lie.
My soul explodes the way the transformer's shrapnel glistened
in my eight year old irises.
It destroys, self destructs under the pressure and melancholy
that a sudden jolt to the head
can often cause.

And maybe I'm wrong.
This all-
this all may not have ever happened. Who's to say
we aren't all just
dreaming?
Who are we but a collection of eyes unaware of what we are really seeing?
The hand of the universe tries to jolt
us awake with a blast of
soupy air and
tentacles of desire
but we've always told that to go out is to combust.
To believe is devil's play.
But humanity is the devil's playground.

When I was eight years old you
wanted to watch the rain with me but you couldn't have
known it would always
haunt
me, that my teeth would break at the word.
"Come inside," my mother screams,
unafraid of waking the thunder.
I'm not afraid of disturbing the lightening; it's never been wary of disturbing me.

I bow as an equal
retreat from humanity
smile at the inferno.

Looking at the storm
is
looking
through a well-maintained
mirror,
straight through the skeptical eyes of
God.