Heavy Skies

The sky is weeping tonight.

I board up the windows and latch the door, remembering how my sister used to do the same when she took care of me.

“There isn’t always a reason,” she would say, “sometimes the sky fills with tears and it must let them flow.  Leave it be.”

I struggle to close the window in the kitchen, it’s hinges have rusted over from years of the sky’s tears.  The little dents in the panes warn of the anger it’s held up against.

My sister used to say that memories haunt the rain.

I pick up blankets and shut myself into my room, using them for extra protection as I burrow into my bed.  It is soon warm there, and I let my mind drift off to tell me stories.  Like she used to, though I can’t tell the same ones.

Her stories became ghosts the night she walked outside while the sky wept.

And never came back.

I suppose the raging and tears wore on her until she had to find out why.  She’d always warned me to keep myself from asking questions like that.

The house shudders, as if it could shake the sorrow from its sides.

Sometimes the wind tries to soothe the sky, rushing past our walls to reach her cold fingers for the clouds.  I can hear her sometimes, whispering through the cracks.

Shhh, shhh, let me hold you.  Come with me, you will be alright.

It doesn’t work, the sky never believes her.

Neither do I.

I fall asleep under my covers, the muffled sound of a worn out sky pulling my eyelids shut.  By morning it will be over, and I will search the yard for memories that were left behind.  Maybe my sister will leave something for me.  Maybe she’ll tell me why.

I shouldn’t ask those sorts of questions.

But once you think of them, they never really leave.

I think the sky is weary of the memories that haunt it.  I think maybe the tears are not its own.

I think, perhaps, I’m not so scared of the sky’s raging.

Maybe my sister wasn’t either.