Sebastian Clarkin

As I looked out the sliding French doors to my backyard

I smiled as the raindrops dove face-first into the bricks of the patio.

There was nothing else in the house,

So while preparing a ham and cheese sandwich with a Dr. Pepper and two chocolate chip cookies

I sent you a message about how I was sad that the world wasn’t crashing down around our ears.

 

I had wanted the wind to leave me unscathed,

Standing, staring at a throne of splinters

that was once but would no longer be mine.

I had wanted the rivers to rise and carry me away from what I knew

and we could go to a place where the trees were still rooted

and we could chop them down

and we could build our own home.

 

You know.

The kinds of things that happen in love poems.

 

After I told you what I had for lunch,

We came up with the ingenious plan

In which you would bake cookies

And I would eat them

Because you, apparently, bake delicious cookies.

 

It was a perfect plan, you said, half-serious.

 

And then I said what we both knew.

That the kinds of things that happen in love poems

Don’t happen.

 

“Ah, so what are we to do?” I remember you said.

 

And I told you our story:

I would go on sitting at home

Making sandwiches

And waiting for storms that never come.

 

And you would go on being a storm

Kicking over my tomato plant

Creaking my windows

Drowning leaves in my swimming pool.

 

Obliterating over other houses,

But never mine.