Summer Thunderstorm, Broken Up

The raindrops are as fat as persimmons dropping
        off the tree, but only half as sweet
when you scratch at cumulonimbus

                clouds with acrylics and try to shovel the fluff
into your mouth, tenderly bitter to your
                puffy lips. There is a bird calling for you
somewhere, but it sounds like the dearth of evergreen
        trees in the city, so you plug your ears with the cotton
                of clouds and bite your lip until it bleeds mango nectar,
        soft and unyielding baby teeth stolen back from the
                tooth fairy. Someone is next to you, grasping your
hand in their crystallized ginger fingers, smiling a liquid
        leaf smile as they promise to steal the moon and set it
                into a choker just for you, because they love you. But

the clouds love you better, so you smile and tell them
        you belong to summer storms and hospitals as the rain
                drapes your skin in greasy icing, watching their expression
        drop into a thin impression of being drunk on
dandelion pollen before frowning. They leave.
        You dissolve like a moon flung out of its orbit.
Your skin is the back of the sky,

                vast and ethereal and immortal.

Salonee Verma is an Indian-American emerging writer from Virginia. Her work has been previously featured in BLANK Magazine NYC and assorted local magazines and has been recognized in the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards. Find her online at saloneeverma.carrd.co.