Water doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not

I find peace in that, in the certainty that

I am not in control

Paddleboards flip, boats sink, I tumble through waves but

Calmly, calmly

With grace, with primal fear overridden by electric blue

The terror, the weight of the ocean pressing against my back

It encompasses me, it’s all-consuming

I am addicted to the serenity just before the drop

 

His bedroom walls were yellow

The same color, he said, as

Sunlight in the early morning

 

The dream wedding dress of my eight year old fantasies

Was a pale gray Vera Wang

The elegant bunches of tulle were stormclouds;

I was engrossed by storms

Imagine something so large, it fills the sky

It was the most I could see, the most I could fathom

Fixated on the eerie creep of gray across the sky, I would sit on my front stoop

Just to feel the rain

My hair, plastered to my forehead

My cheeks rosy from the biting wind

It was all around me, and

I could only hope to be that vast one day

 

Her wallpaper was green

Embossed with cherubs of silver leaf

Her wallpaper, meticulous in its silver spun

Grape leaves and chrysanthemums,

Echoed laughter, echoed cheers

She could hear it, ringing even now yes she

Could still hear them in that room

Ecstasy like a bullet, ecstasy ricocheting

A decade of endless noise, noise, noise

A decade of silence, unbearable

Silence

The walls murmur softly,

Whispers of a chair drawn for no one

 

I am small,

I feel small,

And still I am a thunderclap

We surround ourselves with that which

We cannot bear to lose

The kiss of sunlight on his skin

The rush and the glamour and

Serenity

And the wonder of something so large it

Fills the sky