Said the rain outside my window
as it tumbled to the ground
won’t you lend me a hand
can’t you hold me up?
I’m falling like Niagara
past these cusps of clouds
sifting through the sky
like birds or butterflies
If you could take my hand
would you hold it?
where would you lead me?
or would you let go
let the damp spots dry
and lay in the sun
instead of playing
in the rain
like children
He shivered on the park bench, gripping a folded newspaper to his breast while masses of umbrellas–yellow, white, polka-dotted and rainbow–rushed past him. A little girl in a pink raincoat let go of her mother’s hand and stopped by the bench. She wasn’t scared by his unshaven face, his weathered clothes, his wrinkled hands. Instead she smiled, said, “Here, mister,” and handed him her tiny pink umbrella before her mother pulled her away.
or, SHARDS of the SHATTERED
Cody shuddered when the wind blew a few drops of rain onto the page: They splattered there like little drops of blood, the yellowing paper instantly discolored like Rorschach blots waiting to be analyzed. He wiped the tips of his fingers over the spots, judging their wetness and if they needed any special treatment, and then decided it was safest to close his book: The spots might leave small scars, but nothing else could be done. Sometimes the Wyrd went that way.
Cody stuffed the book into his pocket and stood up. The grey clouds, thick in places but breath-thin in others, tumbled over the skies in every direction he looked. Over the trees and bulging boulders before him he gazed at the dance of dragons in the sky promising winds beat from leathery wings and electric breath that would incinerate all it touched. Cody’s lips curled into a smile.
I was born with the wind.
I flew through the sky in a single night. My heart touched the rain, and I found love. We danced, she and I, while the storm cried around us, calling for us, thundering above us, and tearing us apart. When the rain poured forth its final tears, she melted in my arms, fading and then falling away before me. I cried out for my love, lost. Agony filled my thrashing mind; pain became my breath’s taking.
And when, at last, the storm blew away, I died with the wind, shattered, broken.
I shut my eyes tight
tonight
it’s all right
to fight
for love
for light
Take my hand
like passing sand
till I land
tonight
in love
in light
I look away
today
take in the stray
I sway
in the fray
towards love
towards light
and hold tight
tonight
Excerpted from To the World I’ll Be
Silent Soliloquy 