The Queen of Rain fell into our lives,
bare except for humus and dead leaves.
As a child , with an armadillo’s instinct,
I burrowed into soil and my only friends
were the roots of plants, the organic waste from animals,
but the Queen of Rain washed away the soil
and flooded my little secret dirt tunnels.
No No No she said. I’ve come to bring rain.
At first, we rebelled. We needed to hold
on to our green monkeys and our swallowtail
butterflies we kept in tight mason jars.
To us, they were symbols of what was most sacred
and persistent. We knew what to worship. Our mothers
only spoke in one language. Our fathers were busy
emptying the forests of latex and honey.
When they returned home after a hard day,
they built their children chairs from rattan.
But the Queen of Rain came down and took
our houses away. She killed our fathers
and made our mothers her servants.
The earth grew rich in iron and bauxite,
but there was no one to mine them.
And we the children grew into vines,
vines touching other vines,
vines and yellow and green and red and orange
flowers and we grew until we formed a giant leaf canopy
covering the earth. One that the Queen of Rain could never penetrate.
We did not shed a tear.
Kyle Hemmings is a writer from New Jersey, New York.