When it rained,

my grandmother would clutch her rosary

and pray on each bead.

Anxiety would fill her as her children would sleep

all safe. All strong. All taken care of, all along.

She spoke to the mother who she called Mary.

The mother of life.

If you overheard her it might sound like a chant,

a rhythm,

a dance.

But she didn’t dance, she sat.

With stillness in her bones, shaking muscles and aching eyes.

And yet the rain would dance between her inhales and exhales and take her heartbeat in it’s hands

Polyrhythmic thunder.

Sometimes leaving crops alone but sometimes stripping land

the rain made the decisions, “How calloused be his hands?”

So, when he’d rub her back at night,

those nights before the rain,

she’d feel every prayer to mother that she sang

and if releif should find her now, in death I hope she knows

that she was only ever praying to the rain.