A. Wear the sun around your neck like an Olympian medal. Hold your heart with your hand while the world listens to your anthem. And do not cry as your glory puddles around you: a halo that slices scythe-like through clouds.
B. Smirk at the swirling sheets of clouds on the horizon. They are too far to touch you. Flick them away like marbles and crush their pride with your palms.
C. Gulp as they edge closer. Breathe slow. Ignore the tempo change, the flurried minor chords, the saving button that pops up at the corner of a video game.
D. Shake your fist at the sky. Scream. Puffer up and pretend to be bigger than the storm itself. Bluff, and tell the clouds to take their best shot.
E. Why is the boss battle so much harder than everything else?
F. Ignore it. The sky is not going gray. The clouds have no reason to balloon. This progression is unproportional, unprovoked. You gnash your teeth and wait for it to blow by.
G. It doesn't.
H. You should have brought an umbrella. You are always unprepared.
I. You have overestimated your importance in the world. The storm doesn't care.
J. The sky vomits around you. The trees are an earthquake. The puddles are swallowing up the sidewalk. The sun is ripped from your neck. Your face goes dark. The world splits with lightning.
K. You deserve this.
L. Sit there and don't move. Feel how easy it is to melt into inspirational torrents of agony. Wonder how this could have happened to you.
M. There is a building fifty feet away, but you're drenched already. What's the point?
N. Maybe you can't get wetter, but the cold is starting to whisper things.
O. Think about climbing up the tallest tree in sight. Feel soggy splinters knick your waterproof flesh. Let the storm crash in. Hope that the branches will snap and lightning will catch your fall only to leave your cracked carcass face-down in a concrete basin.
P. The world won't miss you. They are battling storms, too.
Q. In comparison to the storm, you are insignificant. The revelation is ichor on your tongue.
R. You wake up every morning and pray you don't lose.
S. Is it a draw?
T. Nothing. Let the storm win. Whisper your surrender at night when no one can hear you. Let it snatch away everything you love in its floodwater. Forget the weight of the sunlight around your neck. Drift until you drown. Tread water until your toes go foggy. Keep hoping for stray lightning bolts.
U. This is all that there is.
V. You are a sandcastle on the shoreline. The key on the kite. You are asking to be taken apart.
W. It is laughable. How easy everything can become undone.
X. Wait until it is bored with you. When suddenly the sky is an empty blue. The sidewalks are just sidewalks. The trees are just trees. Struggle to lift the sun to put around your neck. Collect the carnage the storm has left behind. Try not to cut yourself on the fragments.
Y. There is no rainbow. The storm makes no promises. You are still dripping, and you know
Z. it will be back.
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apr "20," 2017
i keep trying to write poetry at 3am, and it's probably not a good idea.
YOU ARE READING
watterson
Poetryan experimental attempt to write a poem a day for the month of april spoiler alert: i did it
