Being sixteen feels like a storm

Pressure and heat building in your chest like gathering electricity

You hum with it, restless and anxious and hopeful all at once

There is so much feeling inside you,

Fury and faith, passion and pain, lust and longing

That you think you were never meant to hold on to it for this long

You want to release it out into the world and you will not regret it

You may damn well drown in the downpour

But at least the weight of the rain will catch your tears

It is recklessness and ruination and redemption

 

Being sixteen feels like a storm

The air is different now, heavy and still with things said and unsaid 

All of them true enough, you suppose, as you cradle the words with gossamer wings

Sheltering them from the hurricane that gave her life to them

You will love them with the full force of your teeming, trembling, tumultuous heart

Just as you love the storm that you have forged from the bellows of your lungs

You will enjoy falling in love with the universe because surely you know

That your storm is already a love letter to everything you cannot fathom understanding of

Because the rain is a slash along your palm, a vow spilling from your veins

And because the flush in your cheeks is a pinking promise whispered in the dark

 

Being sixteen feels like a storm

The thunder claims your heartbeat as its own, the drum of it a broken rhythm, an erratic pulse

You swear that the wind has always been screaming your name

It is as lost in you as you are lost in it, or maybe you’re just lost

You are the tempest and it roars through you, hungry for the taste of taking

Swallowing everything it wants and never looking back at the carnage

Casualties are for the cold and for the cautious and you are neither

You know this the way you know that you know that this storm is ripping the hole inside you

Ripping the whole inside of you wide enough to let the music in

But you know that you can only pause to listen for a single breath before lightning splits the sky