The sky talks but no one listens. Or, perhaps, we haven’t learned how to hear it. When your joints ache before the rain, when your ears ring right before sunlight splits the clouds, when you have an unnerving sense that you are being watched although you are alone – that is it. That is the sky talking.

I was about 10 the first time the sky talked to me. Home wasn’t safe, so I ran away and read in a meadow. The wind kept turning the page because she reads faster than I can. The sun kissed my forehead every few hours to remind me to eat and the clouds angled themselves to cast the best reading light.

Those creatures up there were my best friends. They offered understanding that was lacking in my peers, but more than that they offered perspective. They saw what others missed and missed what others saw. Aren’t you curious about what you are missing?

Kailah Peters

 

Kailah Peters is an emerging African American writer who studies creative writing at DePaul University. She writes with Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand around Chicago. Her work was debuted in Rigorous Magazine.

© 2019