a poem: velvet

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Velvet 

I started writing a poem 

about lightning. 

About you. 

It sucked. 

The poem, that is. 

Not that writing about you sucks. 

It doesn’t. 

I like it 

very much. 

But what happened 

was I realized

I don’t want to write a poem 

about lightning,

when I want to write a poem 

about you. 

Lightning poems –

they’ve been written 

before, you know?

Each one sits

forgotten;

no feature clear enough 

to discern. 

Just a flash

of electric light

before it scorched

the earth. 

But when I write about you,

I call you Velvet. 

And picture something soft. 

And rhythmic

like a hand out a car window 

rolling the wind 

on a desert highway.

And suddenly I feel wiser

than I was 

when I would only write 

about lightning. 

I’m not scared of hurting you.

Or me, for that matter. 

I thought she was fear –

that voice I heard

deep from my stomach.

But as I wrote 

the way I do,

I came to hear

what she was here

to say. 

The voice, 

once small and unsure,

now steady 

like an oak

or the oldest longleaf pine.

She told us there’s no way to see clearly 

now

when only lightning 

is in the sky. 

She knows it’s best to breathe 

and wait 

to see if the soft 

thing

like velvet 

is here. 

Maybe sometimes

I wish you knew the girl I was 

years ago 

who prayed for lightning.

But I’m sorry to say

you have fallen for me 

as a woman 

who asks

now 

only for warm

and steady 

sun. 

by katie cunningham