surely not .....

(digital drawing. a yellow background done in a scrubby textured style. to the right, c!tubbo leans on the windowsill of a tall lancet window, kneeling on the floor. on the left, a poem formatted like a play script.)

KID SAYS TO GOD: If you cry one more time this month, and send your anguish wet over my nice dry country, and drown out my crops and bloat all my riverbeds, I’ll come up there. I don't know what I’ll do. But it’ll be real bad. I’m a real killer, mind you, and everyone is saying so. 

GOD SAYS: [White streets gone quick with rain. All your buildings half-sank in silver. Row your heart out].

KID SAYS: I’m planning my brother’s funeral right now. You’re not invited. He wouldn’t want you there. 

AND GOD SAYS: [A thousand earth worms with their bellies in the dirt, the ditches collapse into mud].

KID SAYS: Last week, I pressed a button with my thumb and sent him to Hell. And everyone is saying so. When we were younger we slept pressed together on the floor of the barracks, warm like thorns in each other’s sides. God, God, what can I do? 

AND GOD OPENS ITS BIG MOUTH AND THROWS: RAIN. Wear the howling. Spill the wailing down the front of your dress shirt. Bleed into this madness – sweep across the rest of them like a bad tide. [A thousand dams burst and insects die].

KID SAYS, QUIETLY: I don’t think I want to do that at all. 

GOD SAYS: Get a grip. 

KID DRAWS THE CURTAINS. AND SAYS TO GOD: Send us a little sunshine.