Where was your lightning
This poem came out of a traumatic memory. The trauma involved one of my sisters, and I experienced the secondary trauma of witnessing.
As this memory has continued to surface, I’ve struggled to see God. He appears absent. I want to throw him in there, draw some silver lining from it, but I haven’t been able to. It’s a traumatic memory. It’s also a lonely memory.
While I was writing, I knew my regular prose wasn’t going to express what I was feeling, though the words weren’t coming easily. As I scribbled down random phrases, I said, “Goddammit, God, if you’re going to make me go through this, the least you could do is give me a genius poem.”
The poem is far from genius. But the words eventually came. I struggle with poetry because my poems never resolve. I find a lot of things in life are like that—they just don’t have a resolution. I think it’s the reason my emotions could only be expressed in poem form.
Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain
Where was your earthquake
Your rage
Why didn’t you shake the heavens,
Indignantly
Instead, the house was silent
Faces contorted with shame
Fear, and fear of fear
Denial and lying
Hope, a loser’s game
Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain
Where were your tears
Where was your good,
You know, the good you promised
Where was it then
Where was it now
Why didn’t you tell me it would be okay
Why did you let me feel so alone
Why did you break our hearts
Stop bringing up images of the cross,
Or telling me how much you care
I can’t understand those things,
Because when I needed you
You weren’t there
Stop showing up in my boat
Saying peace to a storm
I needed you once,
And you didn’t come through
Why would I want you now
Stop saying, I love you
I don’t want to hear it
Where was your love,
And the fear you dispel
I knew nothing but fear,
And a love for my sister
I didn’t want her to hurt
Why didn’t you help her
Stop showing up in my brain
I don’t want to know
It’s too late now
I just wish I could know
Why you stayed out of sight
Why you hid your face
And kept your light from my life
Where was your lightning in the midst of my rain?
See connected poem Why did you weep at Lazarus’s grave?