Before - Fatigue

The rain falls incessantly
on the hood of my raincoat
like a child tapping on a window:
persistent, loud, demanding attention.
It thunders through the trees,
hitting every leaf, every branch
on its way to the ground
where it becomes
mud - sucking on my boots
with every heavy step.

My companions are out of sight,
some ahead, some behind.
I am alone on the trail.
Just me and the rain, and
my backpack. Its straps dig roughly,
the pain has built gradually over
five days of the same weight
pressing into my shoulders, hips, and lower back.

That weight reminiscent
of the one on my mind,
a nagging, undefined disaster
that smolders, smokeless, out of sight.
An unscratchable itch, a heavy,
vague foreboding sense of something
gone badly awry - but what?

My thoughts are broken
by an exultant cry.
I lift my eyes with effort
and see the others waiting for me
at the tunnel's gaping mouth.
It extends through the darkness
to the light at the end. I'm almost there,
so I try to quicken my steps,
but my excitement is dampened
by the weight of the falling rain.
My plodding gait will not be hurried,
but I am coming. I'm coming.
At last.

by Emily Roy

(She wrote a series of poems in her poetry class at SVSU winter semester of 2022, about an event - Rosie's accident when she fell in the firepit and burnt her hands. She tells the story in a series of 9 poems and it's truly amazing. She captures details and emotions and truth. As horrible as the event was, I love the way she put these together and she is truly gifted, like her Grammy.)