The Life Cycle of a Storm Cell Lullaby

Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula, where she is an MFA Candidate at Northern Michigan University and an Associate Editor for Passages North. Her prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gordon Square Review, Drunk Monkeys, Third Point Press, Coffin Bell, and Sidereal Magazine, among others. She has a bike named Stella and enjoys murder documentaries.

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i.

On your eighth birthday, long before you were in love with weather, your dad took you to Big Surf Waterpark because your parents had just gotten a divorce, and you found out on the third of July, which you used to recognize as an anti-holiday, but now you just don’t recognize at all. You slouched in a bloated inner-tube, floating down a lukewarm lazy river, clouds popcorning in the humid sky. You were afraid of the tallest flume, the yellow painted tunnel in which your body would twist and turn before being dropped into a deep pool, and only took the ride to prove yourself wrong—that your fear would not pull you under with it.
 

ii.

When you parents sold the house you grew up in, you cried about the real estate agent’s insistence on painting over the abstractly ugly bathroom wall. One evening, you scratched out a four page essay with poorly drawn graphics that defended said bathroom wall. Said you saw other worlds in it. Saw the head of a wolf. A dancing voodoo doll. A boat with paper sails.

 
iii.

Nobody else saw your worlds.

 
iv.

You were anxious. Had trouble adjusting. Couldn’t keep track of homework assignments. Cried for three hours in the fifth grade because you forgot your backpack at home and had a meltdown in the bathroom. Moved into a sun-colored house. Called your mom when she was at work because the landscapers across the street looked like bad people, and you were sure they were going to break into your house, and nobody else saw that world either, because they weren’t bad people and your brain was in overdrive and it was sad and you were doing the best that you could.


v.

Tornado sirens gave you panic attacks. Panic attacks gave you panic attacks. Your sister’s boyfriend hung himself. A boy touched you and it was okay. You were a storm warning, breaking however you could. During freshman year of college, you almost failed out halfway through spring semester because you were scared of touching doorknobs because what if you got ebola and died and what if that spot on your upper leg was cancer and what if you have head lice and what if there is no world after this one is over. That year, you saw a psychiatrist. Started taking medication. Finally lost your virginity. Wanted to spill your soul to somebody. Your parents were married to different people. 

 
vi.

You wrote a poem about stratus clouds and didn’t hate the thunder of your own voice. Began jotting down birthdays in your planner. Broke up with your high school boyfriend. Adopted a dog. Got sick after pounding a red solo cup of cheap vodka in your best friend’s living room. Studied the names of your favorite constellations. Saw lions and planets in the unclaimed stars.

 
vii.

​The falling sky loved you back. Watched you write letters to your eight year old self. Wept when you wept. You were alive for another birthday, and when you finally got an actual night’s sleep for the first time in weeks, you nightmared over water slides and wind storms and fireflies and airplanes and dark wine and a girl who might have been you, but you still can’t remember her face.