Monsoon

My lungs compressed against the confines of my ribcage
with each intake of thick, dusty air.
The ominous clouds lay stagnating overhead.
My hips rocked harshly against the cracked leather of my horses’ saddle
as I clenched tighter to her raggedly furrowed reigns.
She stamped the ochre earth,
sending a dull echo between the stony underpasses.
She halted and reared before I even heard the first clap of thunder.

In seconds,
it was applause.

With every fresh cry, the sky would shake out another bed sheet,
sending tiny unknown particles into my sight.

It did not take me long to abandon horse.
With a kick and a grunt I dismantled,
landing on the silky pebbles with a jarring scrape
as my feet struggled to remain firm.

The sting of salt in my eye matched that of my tongue;
Every office full of the sea-sky.

I was only vaguely aware
of the snap of the tree boughs under the whirring hiss of the wind.
I could not tell
if I could feel the shrill cold
or if I could smell it.
My body was so heavily saturated with grainy dankness
that the magenta ink was running off my trousers
and making great puddles of reddened drool at my feet.

My skin was bleeding.

I laughed.
My lungs filled with water.
I cried,
my tears and the water becoming one,
pouring into my agape mouth and leaving an unfamiliar residue on my teeth

(this one's mine)