Where was your lightning

This poem came out of a traumatic memory. The trauma involved one of my sisters, and I experienced the secondary trauma of witnessing. 

As this memory has continued to surface, I’ve struggled to see God. He appears absent. I want to throw him in there, draw some silver lining from it, but I haven’t been able to. It’s a traumatic memory. It’s also a lonely memory. 

While I was writing, I knew my regular prose wasn’t going to express what I was feeling, though the words weren’t coming easily. As I scribbled down random phrases, I said, “Goddammit, God, if you’re going to make me go through this, the least you could do is give me a genius poem.” 

The poem is far from genius. But the words eventually came. I struggle with poetry because my poems never resolve. I find a lot of things in life are like that—they just don’t have a resolution. I think it’s the reason my emotions could only be expressed in poem form.


Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain

Where was your earthquake

Your rage

 

Why didn’t you shake the heavens,

Indignantly

 

Instead, the house was silent

Faces contorted with shame

Fear, and fear of fear

Denial and lying

Hope, a loser’s game

 

Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain

Where were your tears

Where was your good, 

You know, the good you promised

Where was it then

Where was it now

 

Why didn’t you tell me it would be okay

Why did you let me feel so alone

Why did you break our hearts

 

Stop bringing up images of the cross,

Or telling me how much you care

I can’t understand those things,

Because when I needed you

You weren’t there

 

Stop showing up in my boat

Saying peace to a storm

I needed you once,

And you didn’t come through

Why would I want you now

 

Stop saying, I love you

I don’t want to hear it

Where was your love,

And the fear you dispel 

I knew nothing but fear,

And a love for my sister

I didn’t want her to hurt

Why didn’t you help her

Stop showing up in my brain

I don’t want to know

It’s too late now

I just wish I could know

Why you stayed out of sight

Why you hid your face

And kept your light from my life

Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain?


 See connected poem Why did you weep at Lazarus’s grave?

Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash