In the Rain House, By Shannon Connor Winward

In my dreams, the moon of mother's eye

splits and cracks, a river swells against

the branches of her lashes

and when it breaks, I wake up gasping.

It rained again last night. It froze today

my roof sagging with a drop of it

round and heavy as my head.

The grass stuck together, white, jagged

protesting my grunts and kicks, my need

to carve a door.  The afternoon rain

sloughed it clean again, but I am cold, cold. 

Summer is a ghost.  The birds

don't sing to me, the flies and beetles

have all gone; no chirrups, no roars.  The stream

has belched over its shores, and the rain

keeps coming back, thrashing petals

from their necks, knuckling across my leaf-

shadow floor.  I have worn

through my lady slippers, my gown

mother's careful stitches fray and shiver

my worry chokes and croaks like toad words

mud in my throat. It's time

to go.  Go where? The rain

will crush me, it will turn to snow. 

The sky is huge, the field is vast

a rough, shorn sea—I will be buried there

unless the owls find me first. They ask

when will I feed them, when will I crawl

from this house—it won't stand

forever; it yellows, it rolls

on itself, the honey brittles.  I will starve.

Oh, Mother, I am afraid. I miss my little

brown walnut bed, tucked and rocked

in your warm breath, your scent of bread.
Do you think I left on purpose?

Do you pray for me? Do you mourn?

Do you thumb shut the window?

Do you sift the barleycorn?

Do you imagine me here, stuck like hoarfrost to what

I cannot change?  It will rain, and I will drown.

The rain keeps coming down.

I used to row in circles round my basin pond.

My thoughts go round in circles.

I once rode the wild current

crossed the world

lashed to a butterfly.  He was my friend.

Now he's gone.  If I had wings, I would have

caught him, I would soar home, but I have only

these tiny feet, and Time is monstrous.  It marches on.

The rain stomps autumn beneath its heel

and winter is rushing in behind

with its ice and fear, its crystal pain. 

But to hell with tears, to hell with rain. It's time to go

go soon.  I'll lasso the moon; either that or die here

with all her wishes, all her dreams of me.

Shannon's bio: "My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Analog, Gargoyle, Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, Gingerbread House, and past issues of EC, among others. My poetry chapbook, Undoing Winter (Finishing Line Press, 2014) was nominated for an SFPA Elgin Award.  I am also a staff writer for Pop Culture Madness and a poetry editor for Devilfish Review."