their eyes were watching God.

The view from my window has gone completely white.  The wind howls louder than lost souls in purgatory.  The rain sounds like the slap a black woman gives her husband for leaving her for a white woman.  Nature has gone mad.  This torrential downpour has everybody's attention on God. We might have fucked this one up.  Would it be completely wrong if the rain washed everything out and started this life as we know it, over?  Maybe then, first loves would know their worth and new boyfriends would know how indispensable they are.  Maybe then if all of nature's madness could put a calm to our own, we could start over within ourselves by following the example of the Earth.

The soundtrack of the storm plays like the one in my heart.  Steady, monotonous, never skipping a beat.  Whether it plays for five minutes or a lifetime, I know the melody too well, I know the melody by heart.  I guess that's what they mean when something is so connected to your spirit that life ceases to exist without it's pitter patter underneath your ribs.  The solitude of a storm can sometimes bring it all together for you.  It's wondrous to think that when you feel like it's all going to end, how many things you have yet to begin. Watching cars stutter through white lines and trees dance while their limbs bark makes our humanity seem in vain.  The world would be much more beautiful without our litter, litter being anything from styrofoam cups to panties reminiscent of the evening before and the man after.  But for now, we're here, stuck in the limbo where humanity witnesses divinity and we still don't know any better.  The nerve of us to say there is no God, when every day I look at something that man could never touch and never grasp, something as simple as raindrops and as complex as tornadoes.  Who owns that?  Who controls that?  Who schedules that?  The best thing I've seen man do is witness the testimony, maybe even write it all down.  But the story? It escapes us and it always has.  The writer, being an anonymous force that lurks and lingers around to the point where we sometimes even forget he, she or it exists until thunder storms outside of our windows.  Even though we can take credit for making those windows, we must not forget their purpose - to keep the outside from coming inside.  The mere thought of never knowing when or what that outside will be should keep us aware of how much we are truly unaware of.

In fact, the only ones I think even have a clue are animals.  They can smell a storm and they are on the move as the seasons change.  They never look back, not for a job, a significant other or even each other.   When it's time to go, it's time to go.  I'm convinced that their ability to move when sitting still is no longer plausible has everything to do with Noah and his ark.  But us? Us, measly humans can't seem to figure out, as a collective at least, that leaving everything behind is sometimes the only way we can save ourselves.  So, instead, we end up dying a million times holding onto poisonous things, even when the dark skies tell us we need to find some new light.  You know who else has it figured out a little more than we do? Plants.  When it rains, it pours and they're thankful.  When the sun shines, they stretch their stems toward the only infinite source of energy.  They do not compete with one another, they do not lean their buds into one another to gossip.  They all search for their fair share of shine.

But one thing, that I do notice that has an uncanny way of reflecting one another is our emotions and the weather.  Like plants, the sun replenishes what we may have lost in the misery of gray skies and darker pasts.  When the sun peeks through those fluffy clouds, our steps seem a lighter and our smiles, even the most awkward ones, smile.  But when the weather takes that turn to wipe away the litter we've piled up on its terrain, our emotions feel the brunt.  Our spirits pour like precipitation and each new emotion piles up like fresh white snow, too cold to be naked but too pretty to avoid.  We become the scenery.  Like raindrops disappear in oceans, we run like rivers. Perpetrating ourselves to be products of nature, reminiscent of an image we've never really known.  In essence, that's what nature is, an essence that we are simple replicas of.  Our speech does not make us greater, our accomplishments does not make us superior.  We are simply witnesses, here to keep the story alive for as long as we are.  And in the event that we ever forget how breathtaking the view is from where we stand, nature in all of his or her or its glory, will rage so loud and so terrifying that it will take the rib from Adam, create Eve and start over.