How the Rain Falls by KB Ballentine

Fog heavy over the riverbank,

cotton-thick, an echo of gray.

Solitude fastens its teeth,

and I ache from wounds that needle

my imagination and my nightmares.

Where did you go before you left?

Sweetgums creak and groan,

an oak sliding sideways in the woods.

Later the sun will thrive,

a wild blue scorching the mist

that wraps my skin

and soaks through bone

leaving the core of me cold,

frozen through fiery July days.

Thunder swells.

Rain drums down, now the only sound.

I watch love, wearing galoshes, walk away

---

KB Ballentine’s sixth collection, The Light Tears Loose, appeared last summer with Blue Light Press. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.