by Amanda Oaks
It’s raining your name & five miles back
my windshield wiper eyes gave up on
clearing the way you used to mother me
into thinking that it was okay to love me
like that. It’s raining your name like
the way bones shake when they are
standing in the tallness & balancing
on the hollowed-out surface
of either our love or fear. It’s raining
your name like bomb squad, like
battering ram, like fallout shelter.
It’s raining your name & I want it to be
hymnal. I want it to be like two sets
of legs intertwined inside a sleeping bag
in a covered bed of a pickup truck parked
on a forgotten dirt road. I want it be like
the way the body remembers touch. The way
a smell or a song can jet ski you back 20 years.
It’s raining your name & if it can’t be that,
I’d rather it be volcano ash falling over a town
we just mowed over. I’d rather it be the debris
from the crash between our two airplane hearts
dead-dropping to the ground. It’s raining
your name & I turn slow leak. I turn puddle.
I river. I ocean. I fuckin’ tsunami. You
waterboard. You constant drip. It’s raining
your name & I can’t seem to remember
the way the inside of my head sounds
without it.