Stormy Weather

Trees shift and claw and heave down their bark, leave traces of wet on the sill. The wind screams up the valley, shaking the house, ruffling this heart. Branches break outside my window. I can hear and feel but cannot see where the destruction is coming from, I just see the chaos of movement. I am moving within. I scrape my limbs on the window, sigh at the storm raging inside, batter my mind with conflicting thoughts echoing of something I cannot name or touch. 

The rain begins. The surface of the pond is a million stars exploding, a million oceans created, a million exhalations of snakes and birds and me. I cannot see my reflection or the reflection of trees or sky. I cannot see anything but a disturbance of the surface, a lack of clarity, a texture of additions that cannot be subtracted. Is this seeing? Or not seeing?

The remaining branches bend and shake and lodge themselves under the eaves of the roof. I lay in bed all night listening to them scraping against glass, scraping the dreams out of my head. Dreams of sobbing myself to choking, dreams of anger and accusations and fear. Scrape and scrape awake. I can’t breathe, the pond goes dry. The branches give and break and fall to a ground far below. Crack and burst. I can’t see anything but the darkness and it blinds me to the possibility of light, of stars, of birds. 

This is what there is: a pile of branches and broken windows. A pond of unknown depth. My head and my heart and the hurricane within.