Relapse

When the drought subsided I could have sworn,
Kids riding bicycles around the corner
Waved to me as if my house wasn’t two stories
Of beaten brick and morning glories,
Drying like sweet raisins
Speckling the lawn in purple patches
Where no broken brown glass
Contaminated grass laid lifeless,
Existing only to baptize my sins.

But I wasn’t religious anymore,
So I watched the windowpanes crack
Like thin ice that had been stepped on the wrong spot,
I watched the shattered glass cut deep
Into my skin, where no one could find it,
I watched the concave roof collapse like wet paper, so slowly, the sun set before light could shine through the other side and show me the hidden message I had been searching for.


When the rain fell I let it fall through
It dripped from the lips of bottlenecks
On days when the clouds made a wreck-
Of the sky,
“Water will clean the wound” they say
This was my water
Dripping From holes in the walls
Where whispers from neighbors
Smothered the morning glories with heavy downpour,
And I prayed for the first time in years
That the little purple flowers, would all drown and die.