The Sky’s Grief

When she sits and stares out her dimly lit window the dark clouds bring a familiar feeling in her chest; a tightening that is both a warning and memory. And yet she still waits as if something worse will come.

Her clothes are pulled in hurriedly from the hanging line. Her doors and windows are tightly shut and locked. All of her life’s affairs must be in order before any storm so that whatever happens will find her already prepared. Will find her heart settled, but heavy like the clouds outside.

She sometimes longs to speak happy words in the rain; to greet the thunder with laughter and break her own silence. But her heart betrays her with shadows that rise uninvited. She is bright and lighthearted when the sun warms her skin. Jolly. A vibe. Then suddenly quiet when the clouds roll in, watching the sky as though it had something against her.

God forbid rain finds her in Nairobi town, Mr. Dimples’ town. Then she is soaked and running through rising floods in the streets, clutching her bag and counting coins for a matatu that now costs double, as strangers jostle and curse at the water splashing their shoes. Some people act differently when it rains, she whispers to herself. But she knows this more than most, for she becomes different too. A girl undone by the sky’s grief, carrying it as her own.

We don’t know, but perhaps it began in childhood when she hid under blankets believing the thunder could not touch her if she stayed still. Or when lightning was explained as something only outside. Meanwhile inside, her father raised storms against her mother and sometimes against her as well when she could not brave collecting water from the roof as rain battered the mabati house. The roof shouted louder than anyone could, yet he shouted too, and the storm always ended with her soaked in more than water.

You would think the years would quiet the fear of lightning and thunder, but fears of nature grow roots and live on in the body’s marrow. Snakes still haunt the ones who feared them first in childhood; rivers still scare those who once believed they could drown; and for her, clouds are more than weather, they are omen. Everything must be perfectly arranged on a rainy night for if not, she fears the waters will sweep her away in the dark, along with all the secrets and sins she has never confessed.

✍🏽Reagan.