Catastrophe

In decades’ time, I will leave this barren land the way I came in. In frightful quiet after ages of deafening noise, I will leave unnoticed. Rain will hit the windowpane and serve background music in a phone conversation. Much the same, time will pass as melanin drains from my hair - then ebony, now a clock-tainted white.

I will not notice how my mother has turned to ashes. Her voice would still bellow from the kitchen thirty years after our last dinner. It would travel through space like ripples on water, long after the pebble sinks.

When my child lies in the same bedroom that has housed my sisters and I, she will be raised by catastrophe. Earthquakes will cradle her in place of my arms. Storms will come, they will teach her how to say goodnight even when there is little good left. Rain will sing her lullabies, with the occasional hum to a thunder’s snare drum. She will know not to fear lightning when it strikes. Because it is magical. That moment of pure brightness, after surviving ages in blinding dark.

--- end.