Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Storm 
by Michelle Bonczek

Twentieth Contest
SECOND Place

This time it isn't because we argued 
over who will wash the dishes, or how you have no time 
for a library book sale (how excited I was to tell you 
about the library book sale). This time I cry because 

I cannot talk to you about the weather. How when I 
come downstairs, you fixed at the computer, I cannot find 
words and instead yell about how I wasted 
four and a half hours creating a cover letter and résumé 

and how when I went to apply, the manager's receptionist 
had me fill out a measly application instead. And I say 
you are hiding, that you cooped yourself up when 
what I mean to say is, You should've seen it... 

White round clouds skimming a sun bright and blinding 
as love, gray wisps of rain dripping down the sky's blue coat, 
and lightning, one, quick, thin fork sinking its teeth in 
the east, both sun and lightning. Oh, how this world can shine. 

And snow covered the black streets, and snow piled on 
cars' hoods, and then rain's thick steady rain slowly dropping, 
a rainbow faint in the east, and mountains shining and shadowed, 
shadowed and shining. A menagerie of weather that both 

excited and made me sad you were not in that car as I was, alone, 
driving sightless against the sun, yet twisting your torso, stretching 
your neck to see the rainbow in the rearview and not the road 
in front of you. Driving alone from a meaningless interview thinking 

of me, your wife, at home unaware of the world you're driving 
through. And you wanting so much for me to be not with you but
in your place, wind whipping brown branches, hail bouncing like salt 
in the streets, the lightning leaving you 

breathless. And you try but cannot bring yourself to not want
to be alone. How can I explain this storm, this moment, this 
isolated pleasure of awe and wish it for you? So, is it any surprise 
I would arrive home flustered at how you missed it, how I 

cannot become for you this weather moving wind chimes 
dangling from our awning, the rainbow arching hail, love, 
lightning, snow, sorrow, and words failing 
to capture this world of water, wind, and light.