Hurricane

Say it, and I’m in 1995.

In love with the pine tree

that sliced open my grandfather’s

drowned roof, its bones

strewn over our tangled blackberry bush.

Our drooping rose garden.

Even on the covered porch,

barefoot, I was a graveyard of needles.

That trunk, a perfect bridge

through Opal’s breath,

thick as a lie, whistling

it’s okay, close your eyes

while flooding our doorsteps

with wailing branches.

Unlocking our windows.

My father brought me out to feel

the wind razing our earth,

to tell me our sky

is made of blood and veins,

and that’s why we can see

lightning-stained rain for miles

over the woodland. When he left,

I missed the storm,

and each time it returned,

I buried something

beside the corpse of a tree

I never loved enough.

by Bayleigh Fraser

Bayleigh on Twitter: @PoetessBay

Editor’s Note: This heartrending poem is terribly appropriate right now.