draft: instructions for rain

do not begin with the cloud.
rather with the cupboard that swells
when weather remembers the hinge.

count to four (or don’t).
unfold the umbrella AFTER the first drop –
superstition is a kind of physics.

the dog refuses the street / you do not.
step into the water like it knows your name,
which it doesn’t,
but look how it answers anyway.

carry the letter you won’t send.
let the ink bruise.
(there are maps that only appear when wet.)

I forgot the fifth.

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after the notification (still loading)

phone face up / mouth closed.
a small cathedral of maybe
lights in my palm.

typing…
gone.

I rehearse three replies:

1. funny,
2. honest,
3. a window.

choose: [   ]

outside, traffic commas itself.
inside, I pin a breath to the wall
and call it patience.

someone next door laughs in italics.
I almost join.
almost = the distance between “send” and send.

Now, what if...

I am..

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Gordan Struić is a Croatian lawyer, poet, and musician with work in 34th Parallel, Half Mystic, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Ink Sweat & Tears, Headlight Review, etc. His poems explore the fault line between precision and rupture, intimacy and glitch.