Today's poem is by Emma Bolden

Tornado Weather
       

The last high sweat of an August
sun wet my sundress, I couldn't

believe how fast the urge took me
nowhere & no named, I stepped

from that bad rust bucket of a car &
became a good pack of nothing, just

a bunch of bones roped together under blue
& white gingham, under a sky that flashed

its grin at me like I was the emergency.
That set my teeth on the edge

of the hotel sink until morning
came & I still hadn't decided

who I wanted to be except gone.
A cage is a trap but a home is worse,

walls papered with all the what
evers I can't stop remembering to forget.

I stuck my thumb into the roadside, the air,
& when no one stopped I hitched a ride

on my own two feet. At least
I've managed, kept my weathers quiet

in a nowhere only I have mapped,
where mind is both shelter & storm.

Tweet
Copyright © 2024 Emma Bolden All rights reserved
from West Trade Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission