The sky breaks again,
in the same corner.
We patched the ceiling last winter,
painted it white,
said sorry as if we meant it,
but the water still finds its way in,
slow, familiar,
like it knows the route by heart.
Last year’s storm
left something behind.
The bedspread carries
a faint stain of old weather.
If I press my face to it,
I can smell last January,
the heat turned too high,
the radiator sighing.
I tell myself
this time is different.
That this flood will pass,
that my hands will not wrinkle
from holding it in all night.
But I wake to the same pillow,
damp with quiet confessions,
and you beside me.
I could wake you.
I watch the corner of the ceiling instead.