mild texas december

Poem by Jacob Jing

Today I wake, not to rain but the / death of it. Grey through windows, corpsing / against translucent curtains. / The soft scent of a storm, / lingering in the moist breeze. Gently, / I am bent back to slumber like / a beam of light softening as it / splits a cloud. / It claims me like the rain once claimed / the earth / with its gentle plunder of roots, its / warm hand over inhale. / The sun does lonely work on these / deluged days, pulsing weakly through a sheen of sweet vapor / to deliver a small brilliance—/ a puddle of rays, / only to cup, not to drink. /

The second time I am awakened, it is / not by the squall but by the rains of my body. / A tempest in and of itself. / I expect brightness but instead / nose the folds of cold petrichor, made semi-fluid / by the sky’s sorrow. / So this is the winter of our doing. / The color of my backyard porch deepened / by the lingering deluge. The sky silvered into a / waveless sea. The sun sheathed by ghosts / until it is nothing but a cry for breath. / This is what the season brings to us, not cold / but foreign kindness. / The whimpers of the last freeze, / echoing and echoing
through the air. /