Night Rain by Ion Corcos

Night Rain

A cat on the wet road
in a small, quiet town,
the last light fading behind mountains,
peaks covered in snow;
it does not see the car coming

like I don’t see the venom
coming from my mother, another letter
full of her old furniture
thrown from the top-floor window,
mouth like a whirlpool.
The car drives through the water, splashes
as it speeds toward the cat.

The cat, right there, is just a cat.

My mother drives, her life
a mess piled in the back.
She’s in a foreign country, no care
for the rain, or the bright mountain snow,
or the last of the winter light.

The car speeds up
on the wet road. The cat in the headlights,
lost in the dark.
The car roars away,
my mother on the wet road,
skidding,
with all the things she carries.

by Ion Corcos

Twitter: @IonCorcos

Editor’s Note: Allegory drives this poem forward to its inevitable, painful conclusion.