Summer Monsoon (POEM)

Every year, between April and September, warm, moist air blows and brings with it heavy rainfall and flooding. You could say I live in a constant Summer Monsoon. You see my life is not as bad as it could be, the same way a summer monsoon is not as bad as an earthquake or a tsunami. However, it’s always been there, so long that I feel it is a part of me.

Every choice I make is darkened by the big, dirty-looking clouds of a thunderstorm about to happen. And I’ve tried, I’ve tried to make a structure, to build something that protects me from the rain. But when you are constantly put down by yourself, when the problem is not the monsoon itself but the insides of your own land that are slowly rotting until there’s nothing left. When the monsoon just makes it rot faster, and it seems like you are helpless.

And I wish I could flee this land, but I’m somehow connected to it, I somehow can’t escape. I see in the horizon the many ships lighting their beacons so I can hop on and get out of there. But how do you expect me to swim all the way there in a summer monsoon?

And then after so many years of getting used to it, of non-stop rain, of hopelessness and plain sadness, I try one last time. I go with my heart

in one hand and trying to paddle with the other,

hoping I can reach the distant ships, I

try to stay afloat and half a mile in,

my body can’t handle it anymore,

a far-reaching wave plummets me

and I’m there, on the ocean floor,

thinking this is probably where

I’ve belonged this whole time,

and I don’t regret it,

because after so

many years, I

just needed a halt.