downpour forest

By Andrea Lianne Grabowski ​

his spirit is clay-rich. 
carrying memories of the dead who grieved 
their way through eruptions before him. 
constancy is a historical inaccuracy. hurricanes seeped into humanity’s 
bones and insulated them from the existence of bodies.

he has a routine. he has a fog in his belly. he wants
a child instead. 

the soggy forest whispers like a metronome.
he forages for anarcho-punk daydreams to serve as
air purifiers. he trades psilocybin for regret one night,
regrowth the next. he wants to always be harvesting.
the world doesn’t share that desire.

everything comes back. he’d like 
to believe it. even sacrificed testosterone.
every kid deserves euphoria. but he misses it. 

are owls still alive? or did he just see them in a page of an old book?
what about kingfishers? he heard you used to be able to scavenge
for answers: how much rain does a baby need to be
content? he knows fathers have given birth time and time again. he just wants
to read all their stories. his silhouette sprawls across the ferns.
their fronds tell him legends, or maybe truths, but aren’t those one and the same?

---

Andrea Lianne Grabowski is a queer writer, white settler on Anishinaabe land, and recent graduate of Northwestern Michigan College. She has been on the literary staff of NMC Magazine and is editing her first novel. Her poetry is forthcoming in Honeyfire Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, and superfroot.