Grace Yannotta is currently in her senior year of high school in North Carolina. She's an aspiring author and an aspiring historian and an aspiring a lot of things. She has work published or forthcoming in Rabid Oak, The Stay Project, and Dream Noir among others as well as an upcoming astrology column in Dark Wood Magazine.
Grace about how this poem came to be: "My state, packed with beaches to mountains to gleaming cities, has been slammed by not one, but two hurricanes in the past month -- it's rare to have even one every couple of years. This poem was my way of sending love to the state of my affections."
Biblical Proportions
the lights sputtered and coughed at nine in the morning
crushing the warm lamplight and reducing the home to silence
the rain soaked. it did not bend to mortality
it did not exist on the same plane, the same level
it should not fall subjugated to the same rules that
the rest did so it did not. it poured
it came in sheets it came in chains and it did not end
the gasoline rolled down the streets in waves and still
and still it birthed into fall. the stilled bare feet onto
the dampest of concrete. mud curled around toes
what an aftermath. what rain-splattered shirts and
flattened hair. what a world we live in
stand on the back porch and expose your shoulders
blink to the clouds and refuse to ask why
as autumn greets you for the first time, you feel its
cold lips on your neck and you remember the rain
they tell you to remember the rain as if
you would ever truly be able to forget it at all
wonder what happens hear the snap of the trees
against the side of the house and watch the sun
watch the sun reach out its soggy fingerprints among
the leaves and watch the hair on your arms raise
the leaves turn up on their stipules and so do you
on your tiptoes. your hair is pulled back, your shirt is dry
they tell you to remember the rain as if
it wasn’t ingrained in your footsteps
your black jeans and the fogged windows
