Rain in the vicinity
I sit down on the couch
and pull up the weather app on my phone.
The home screen pops up
with my location, informing me there is
"rain in the
vicinity."
I look out the window
-- it's not raining here,
but it must already be raining
a few miles over.
It's not raining here.
My house is cool,
quiet, and dry,
with my glass of clean,
cold water next to me,
I close my eyes and
picture the faces
of the little guy in my
office today --
it has taken him 5
weeks
to learn to hand me a
picture card
as a way of asking for
a bite of spaghetti,
I look in Little Guy's
eyes
and try to imagine what
he understood
when he was beaten at
school
so badly his arm was
broken;
I talk to his father,
who has tears in his eyes,
because nobody cares
about a black boy
beaten in a public school
and I know:
there is rain in the
vicinity.
It's not raining here.
My house smells of
zucchini, cooked on the stove
with garlic, and
onions, and yellow squash,
but my heart aches as I
picture
the young man with
sores on his mouth and lips,
he tells me,
he knows his adoptive
parents have enough food,
but his bio mom taught
him to eat feces
whenever he is hungry,
and now he does it when
he's worried
and the way it makes him
remember her,
and my stomach aches
as I hear the grief he
carries in his 9 year old belly -
it's not raining here,
oh but there's rain --
there is so much rain
in the vicinity.
It's not raining here
--
though it's cloudy, and
humid, the sky hangs heavy and low.
It's not raining here
--
though the sky is dark
and sits like an oppressive weight on my chest.
It's not raining here
--
though there is a
menacing breeze telling of what my neighbors are feeling.
It's not raining here
--
but my heart weighs
heavy with the knowledge
of the rain
in the
vicinity.
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