We lived in a town where the wind forgot
how to whisper. It screamed instead—
a dry-throated thing gnawing
through fences, barns, memory.
The crops died standing up.
The preacher buried the rain
beneath three verses and a hymn.
And still, the sky held nothing for us—
no cloud, no omen, no apology.
We learned the language of waiting:
a cracked glass on the windowsill,
the last onion soft with rot,
the silence of a faucet
that once knew mercy.
They said our fathers traded our future
for rusted tools and credit lines.
They said our mothers swept
ashes under floorboards
until the house forgot the fire.
Still we stayed—
drinking warm cola from chipped mugs,
waving to trucks that never stopped,
praying into dishwater,
hands aching from all we couldn’t carry.
Dust became ritual.
We washed it from our eyelids,
our children’s hair,
the open mouths of dogs
dreaming of green.
And when the last well choked on its own breath,
we looked up,
not for help—
but to remind the sky
what it once called us.
When the Sky Forgot Our Names
