Umbrella

When I push your button you fly off the handle, old skin and bones, black bat wing. We're alike, you and I. Both of us resemble my mother, so fierce in her advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable child who'll catch his death in this tempest. Such a headwind! Sometimes it requires all my strength just to end a line. But when the wind is at my back, we're likely to get carried away, and say something we can never retract, something saturated from the ribs down, an old stony word like ruin. You're what roof I have, frail thing, you're my argument against the whole sky. You're the fundamental difference between wet and dry.