I can’t see the weather; I can’t see the sun, the clouds, the fog, the hail, the snow, the sky. I can’t feel the temperature, and I can’t smell the air. I can’t touch the rain, and I can’t taste it either. Mother Nature, why do you tease me so?

Does my smile displease you so as to cause you to strip me of my most basic human intelligence? My right to live like the earth at least for a moment has been stolen, and you won’t give it back. 

I yearn for the sun to bathe my soul, but I’m chained to a heat lamp. I want the sun to crinkle my skin and leave me reddened, but you torture me with this radiator. I want the sun to rip and tear and blind and choke and burn and scratch, but you hand me a candle and call it quits. 

How long will it be until I see the sun again? 

You’ve shattered my moon and stolen my stars and left me to form scattered constellations from what’s left. You’ve removed me from the very orbit of this planet and banished me to this barren tundra of isolation—reachable only by postcard. 

When will the stars twinkle for me again?

My Milky Way has been watered down. My galaxy is gone and universe extinguished. There is no water left, but my earth is drowning. My earth is browning. My earth is frowning.

When will I breach the surface and feel the blue sky’s embrace? When will you give me what’s mine? 

I wait and wait and wait for a moment. I stall and stall and stall for a memory. I mark time, but I never march. I expect, but I never receive. I want, but I never get.

What happiness can be unearthed from the mud?

You’ve uprooted my garden and salted the soil and expect me yet to bear the bitter fruit of compromise. Nothing can grow from what you’ve given me. Nothing can grow. Nothing.

When will the rain come? When will I dance to its pitter-patter, sodden with glee?

I shall sow and sow, but what can I farm when my almanac is my worst enemy? 

Mother Nature, you’ve left me for dead, but it will be a bitter reckoning when you discover that Father Time is on my side. 

How will you cry when you uncage the sun? It will shine for me and scathe you. How will you weep when you rehang the moon? It’s a dainty crescent, but its pointy tips will protect me. 

You will lose every battle and every war when you come to find out your army has always been mine. For now, I can stand arid, and I can survive dirt. This storm will soon be over, and you know it well.

I can’t see the sun or the moon or the stars. The sun won’t rise for me today, and the moon won’t float in the night. The rain won’t pool at my feet, and the wind won’t hold my hand. 

But one day it all will, and the rainbows will smile in the sky as you grimace.