By Laura G. Goetz
Take off your shoes and let the dew greet that
Dark, lonely place between your toes.
It, too, deserves to be
Cleaned with fresh dirt.
Wriggle and dig,
Allow yourself to sink into the roots running under your soles.
Do you hear them calling to you,
Welcoming you back?
Which of the concentric rings running through your trunk
Have you forgotten?
Monsoon Season
The flash
boom
and buckets dumping sideways
don’t catch me by surprise.
My temple feels storms before they hit.
Perhaps it’s from the practice reading her eyes.
There is nothing softer than the sound of each raindrop careening down
in thunder’s aftermath.
Soft, I said,
NOT silent.
Each one has seen a rainbow on its way down
and is trying to tell you about it.
You do not have to be right all of the time,
or really any of the time.
If you know only one thing,
make it how to listen.
Laura G. Goetz is an overly enthusiastic medical student, writer, photographer, biker, runner, and research dork, with a penchant for cooking without recipes and referencing Audre Lorde, Donna Haraway, and Buffy. Her goal (as both an artist and a doctor-in-training) is to help people feel seen. Her prior training includes an MS in transgender hormone therapy and BS in biochemistry and gender studies, focusing on interdisciplinary scientific research informed by individual embodied experiences. More of her recent poetry and photography can be found in The Intima, Wards, Ponder Review, Heirlock, SIREN, The Medical Student Press Journal, and Reflexions magazines.