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Carol Pearce-Worthington

Downpour

Thunder shakes the little country house. The green apple trees drop apples and branches. Rain pummels the windows and the walls. You go outside, mouth open, to taste the rain. Your hair gets soaked in a hurry. Your clothes, your bare feet, your face all wet; you can feel the soggy boards of the porch with your toes, still warm from the afternoon sun. The wet boards creak. Lightning streaks down into the corn fields and you wonder where the grasshoppers hide in a storm as you go back inside and Gram lights a kerosene lamp and you play hearts until it’s time to go to sleep. The featherbed is deep but the night outside looks deeper still. The stars offer no answers.

graveyard across the road
mother says
she is not afraid