Devonne Brown

“Darkness covered everything, blacker than a hundred midnights, down in a cypress swamp,” James Weldon Johnson’s poem was all I could think about while the tempest rocked the houses on the water. When the light broke, the tempest would be over, light would be restored, and I would stop vomiting for sure. The calm after the storm would take care of everything.

I was tense in the darkness, waiting for the light to take my mind off the nausea. Then I could sketch, and color the cranberry sunrise that was sure to come soon. I felt my pulse quicken when lightning lit the sky again, it was far away and showed the line of floating houses, intact, the waves bouncing against them in the waning storm. Master craftsmen had built these places. There was nothing to compare them to anywhere else in the world.

Another wave, I felt my stomach turn. Motion sickness is a ridiculous excuse to stay home. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.

Wooden boats banged against the docks. The worst was over, the rain had slowed. It was a long  minute for the thunder to come. It sauntered behind the lightning like a slow St. Bernard on a leash. It took big burly steps and its good sweet time. 

I heaved one more time before the sun came up. What a show off sunrise it was, cranberry, blue, orange, and green. More beautiful than I thought it could be. There were no colors in my crayon box nor filters on my camera able to capture it. The best I could do was watch and remember with love.