32 / 84
After the Storm
Gabriele Morgan
The village had pitched their tents long ago, before the
ground had dried up, when the world was still green there.
Over time, the sun came closer and scorched the earth,
and the children of the village learned to live in the heat,
learned to grow expectant of the bright white skies that
blinded, of the light to sear their skin.
They learned to hold the fire within themselves so it could
not burn them up.
But the chief ’s youngest daughter was a storm wrapped
up in skin, her body cool to the touch and the veins in
her wrists dark blue. The village children would hold their
wrists to hers, compare their gold to her indigo and laugh.
Mama, Mama, look how different we are.
She learned to hide the rivers flowing through her veins
in carefully concealed buckets behind her eyelids, neatly
stacked and never toppled, each labeled in perfect penman-
ship:
Different, different, different.
They taught her to have clear weather, told her that her
eyes should never cloud over, that brightness was a priori-
ty. So she mad it her identity, learning to live with buckets
constantly poised to overflow from behind her eyes.
When the ocean inside her grew too tempestuous to con-
tain, she was driven from the village, told that she was
cursed, her water was unclean, told she should have kept
her skies more blue. Floods are not as easy to ignore as
30