Summer Storm

Who told you those monsoons in your eyes were wrong to unleash? Who told you the roots of the mountains weren’t yours to explore, that these poems weren’t breathing, that ink doesn’t bleed and you can’t feel through words? I think I know you. You’ve got Schubert’s serenade tangled in the valves of your heart, braided with the bronchi of your lungs, and I know that system of highways pounding through your head, asking those eyes of yours to focus only on the horizon pains you. Don’t withdraw from the ache. Maybe it hurts for a reason. Maybe the sky shifts and the color bleeds away so that the essence of your life has room to do all that breathing. Don’t be afraid of Saturn’s rings. I know they’re dangerous. I know they’re iced over, stuttering across the things you’ve decided to need. I know the impacts hurt, that they threaten to shatter the fragile bones you’ve laid on the line. But those wild winds in the marrow of your skeleton, in the gray matter of your brain that you’ve bottled up, stuffed down, drowned out, convinced yourself they aren’t there - those are yours. Capable of melting all the frost you’ve let accumulate on your hopes. More so, they can free up all those digested dreams, wedged into asteroids orbiting fragmented fears you only know in the knuckles of your shaking hands. I know I know I know. I know all about the atmospheric relays shooting at your dignity, targeting your bravery; all the infiltrated requests dismissing your regard. I know you.

Stop devouring storms, you are beautifully terrible all on your own.