Hurricane Season

I wake these mornings

My heart galloping

like I must rise to run after Earth

who turned all night without me.

It isn’t always this way

and I know one day soon

I will wake once again

easeful and soft to the world—

no worries or plans

rattling my half conscious mind.

No fear pumping through my languid body.

But in this season—

I wake to the race.

To the thinking and the fear

and the heart clenching pain of change.

This is hurricane season

and my coastlines, my landscape—

they have been rearranged

by a storm surge of grief.

The loss left me hollow and dry as a bone in the desert.

I cried every tear I thought I had.

But then came the storm itself

With wind that felt as though it was carving away each grain of me

one at a time.

And with rain that both filled me up

and drowned me.

My body shook

From the tears

and the grasping

and the wishing

and the running

and the turning away again and again

and the pain

and the pain

and the pain.

I close my eyes

as the sun bursts through the clouds

slowly rolling through the morning sky.

Breathing.

I try to remind myself

That this storm came

after months and months

of praying for rain.