The Tornado Wants a Companion
       

No one wants the whirling all the time.
The tornado is tired
of this life as a novelty, a story for pretty girls
and bragging boys to tell their fish-mouthed friends.
We had just snuck out o f the prom when
I had my hand up her shirt when
Our neighbor's cat turned up four days later in Tupelo—alive
Our house survived, but all the eyeglasses disappeared

Most of it's untrue, anyway, and then
the stories stop. The world returns
to green and routine and next time the sirens
sound, no one even looks up
from their soup, their Xbox, their laundry.

What can the tornado do? No one ever says,
Take me with you,
except for one old woman and a teenage boy
but they were their own disasters
and the tornado has no use for sad sacks.

So the tornado tries again. The skies
darken and brighten at once.
Everything hums into stillness.
The tornado sees the college kids playing
Call of Duty, the dentist humming
as she drills a molar. The tornado will try harder.
Maybe this time they won't tell
the stories. Maybe this time they'll tip
their awestruck faces skyward, cry out
like children to be lifted and spun.

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Copyright © 2014 Catherine Pierce All rights reserved
from The Cincinnati Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission