Yellow Mama E zine

After the Rain

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by Kevin Burke

 

You thought the storm

had come to bury you.

 

It hadn't.

 

The rain was never your enemy—

it was the sky

teaching you

that even the heaviest clouds

cannot keep their sorrow forever.

 

The glass still remembers

how it broke,

but broken things

can catch the morning light

in ways the unbroken never could.

 

Your hands will scar.

Your heart will ache.

But neither were made

to bleed forever.

 

One day

you will walk beneath the same rain,

not to disappear,

but to grow.

 

And when the sun returns—

as it always does—

you will discover

that you were never drowning.

 

You were learning

how to breathe.

 

      Kevin Burke is a 44-year-old American poet whose work inhabits the threshold where philosophy, mysticism, and the addiction of the human anatomy of consciousness converge. Qualitatively assessed as four standard deviations above the norm, he approaches existence as a living manuscript—one written simultaneously in silence, paradox, and revelation. Every question is an invitation to descend further into the architecture beneath reality.​

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     Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.