The only child lies awake during a wind storm
Kathleen Brewin Lewis


Listening to pecans thud on the silver roof.
Hers is the back bedroom that faces the yard.
She wonders if a limb from the old tree
might crash into the room, imagines herself
smashed in bed, splintered wood raining everywhere--
her body littered with the cracked nuts,
hair full of torn leaves. She doesn’t think it fair
her parents have each other in the front bedroom
while she must sleep alone, but she is
too frightened to go to them. 
 
Her father is a deep sleeper; her mother is not.
She often senses her mother wandering 
through the dark house like a ghost. Tonight,
as the storm moans, the ghost walks into her room
in an aqua nightgown. The only child slides out                      
from under the covers, puts her arms
around the ghost’s neck, is carried into her parents’
warm bed where she will soon fall asleep,
her father’s rhythmic snores foiling
the fitful, immoderate wind.

About the Author:
Kathleen Brewin Lewis grew up in the languid city of Savannah and now lives in Atlanta, where the traffic gets worse every day. She loves to hike the hills of North Georgia and North Carolina. Her chapbook, Fluent in Rivers, was published in 2014 by FutureCycle Press. Recent publications include Southern Humanities Review, Cider Press Review, Menacing Hedge, Still: The Journal, and The Tishman Review. She's a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and senior editor of Flycatcher. She really didn't like being an only child, so she made sure to have two children of her own.