what comes after the rain
hello poet.
it’s been too long, again -
this greenandblue planet of ours
has traveled so far
and yet so little
since the last time we exchanged letters.
it has wandered so far,
for so long
(a year and more),
that it landed right where it started.
it’s been
one year, one month, five days -
thirteen months, five days -
fifty-seven weeks, one day -
four hundred days.
that’s three hundred ninety-nine days
too long,
poet.
the moon has waxed and waned,
poet -
grown fat on a diet of hearty laughter and wolf howls,
starved with nothing but shivering children and hateful men,
risen again with a fist, held in the air, screaming for
power,
justice,
freedom,
in other news -
i marched this year,
with millions of people just like me,
rainbows printed on our clothing
and our skin
and our hearts.
it rained the morning of our march,
water flowing down the windows of skyscrapers
and washing away the sins of this city
like an omen from the moon -
take this water.
drink it in.
relish in it.
find beauty in what comes after it.
find beauty in your saltwater bandages,
she said to us,
and i promise i’m trying to listen.
you mentioned sine waves,
poet,
and i find myself
likening my days to them
once again.
(it is not a tangent wave anymore,
going upupup,
but it is not going downdowndown either,
most days,
and so i take what i can get.)
i wonder though,
poet,
about the difference
between sine and cosine.
i question it -
if i were to return to my beginning
(to my origin, if you will) -
would i find myself
at the center of a sine wave?
neutral at both axes,
a perfect zero,
apathetic in every way i could be?
is that my truth?
or am i a cosine wave instead?
starting on a high note,
a 1 instead of a 0,
bright smile and bright eyes?
(i do not think about
a negative cosine wave -
a -1,
so to speak.
my mother told me i didn’t cry when i was first born.
the doctors were worried, at first -
all i did was look around,
my eyes so wide
they took up half of my face.
i’m sure i cried eventually.
i don’t remember.)
i’m sorry i haven’t been here
for your ups and downs,
poet.
i’ve been dealing with my own,
as we all do.
some days,
my life feels like less of a wave
and more of a parabola -
a downward facing one,
except i’ve already passed my maximum value
and i’m just heading down, down, down -
some days,
the rain lasts too long.
the thunder deafens me
and the lightning blinds me
and i want to hide
like my grandmother’s dog does
whenever fireworks fall from the sky.
i try to remember that
there will always be
a positive curveball coming my way -
i just have to remember to swing at it.
i try to remember that
no matter how long the storm lasts,
there will always be the sun following close behind,
chasing her moon in
an endless loop of
love and fireworks
and rainbows.
i hope you remember that too,
poet.
in response to the veins beneath the bark by @rose-curves-and-cardioids
