She always held her head up high,
from the first moment I saw her. She was standing at the door,
dripping wet and pregnant, trying not to cry,
but her chin was up and her shoulders back
and she was standing.I saw her bleeding on the floor, helped to carry her
through the emergency room, watched her almost die.
I saw her enter a church and
meet her son for the first time months later,
and her neck never bent.I saw her doubled over in pain when someone took her son,
saw her take a gun and shoot that man
when he promised to steal her brother too.
I saw her go to prison, saw her go insane, saw her heal.She came home to a man who didn't love her
and a woman who possessed him
and she didn't even glance at them on her way to her son.
I saw her hold her 'Mister Man' over her head
and keep looking up, looking beyond him to the sky.The man who didn't love her used to look at her in wonderment.
I don't think she ever saw that,
ever understood how he looked at her.
He watched her like my mother used to watch the thunderstorms
from inside the screen door of our kitchen.
She would stand there with her eyes locked
on the big old oak tree in the back yard,
watching the lightning dance around it,
the rain bouncing off the ground
and every once in a while the muscles in her calves would twitch
like she was ready to spring into the storm.
That's the way Jason used to watch her.She must not have understood that,
because she left him, finally.
Or maybe she did understand, just like my father seemed to
when my mother's eyes would close and her hand would move
to rest toward the latch on the screen door.
He would sit silent at the kitchen table,
watching her and waiting in perfect silence,
listening to the thunder rolling overhead.
My mother's hand would move ever so slowly to rest on the latch,
and sometimes she would even crack the door a little,
sending a breeze sideways across the table to my father.
But she never stepped out.Carly moved away, as all storms do,
to a man who said he wanted to love her.
Maybe he does, or perhaps all he loves is the chance to win,
to have the mother and the child.
Either way, he wanted her.
He married her,
gave her everything the man who hated her said she wanted.
And still she lingered, like a distant reminder of thunder,
the humidity of a summer storm past.
She would appear from nowhere, bursting into my hallway
and smiling past me into his life and then disappearing again
like a wisp of cloud.Last week, for the first time,
I saw her shaken, saw her torn.
She spent hours with the man who hated her,
who came as close as anyone to breaking her
and he didn't even try.
A change moved over Jason then,
as if the tension had pushed him and he stood,
as my mother never had,
with the door wide open,
facing the storm.
I saw his disappointment as she moved away,
and something in me prayed for rain.I watched him today,
in the mirror across from the elevator
as he tried to say good-bye to her.
He tried to let go of her hands three times,
and every time he found another reason to touch her,
to hold her.
And then the elevator opened.I remember when my mother came home in her wheelchair to die,
just before I moved to this town and became this silent man.
I remember the way her face looked
the first time there was a thunderstorm.
We pushed her chair to the doorway when the first breezes began,
thinking it was where she would want to be,
to watch the rain as always.She seemed happy for a moment and her eyes drifted closed
and her hand moved slowly toward the latch
as it had for the forty years she'd lived in that house.
She pushed it in slowly and the door started to creak open,
sending its little stream of air across the kitchen table.
I remember my father's face,
the way his jaw got tight and hard
as she pushed the door harder,
until it began to open fully,
until a gust of wind caught it and pulled it away from her touch.Her eyes opened then,
and she started to lean forward,
started to try to stand,
until the wind caught the door again
and it slammed to a close in front of her.
She pulled her face into her hands then,
but not before I saw her face.It was the same expression Jason wore,
beneath his armor of invincibility,
when the elevator doors closed.
It was the look of someone who knew there would be no more storms,
no more chances to stand in the rain
and feel the naked power of the universe.
It is the look of loneliness.I saw a secret, in that moment,
just as I saw the secret of his longing,
of his need for her long before he did.
I saw her standing in the doorway of the elevator
with her husband behind her.
She looked at Jason as the doors began to close
and just before they did her chin came up
and she held her head up high.
(I'm not sure who wrote this: wasn't me! But it's beautiful, and I love it.)