Storms Inside

There are days when I move through the world as though carrying a storm beneath my ribs.

No one notices.

The morning arrives with its ordinary face. The kettle sings. The trees stand quietly outside the window. Light pools on the floorboards as if nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, somewhere deep below the surface of things, the sea is rearranging itself.

I have become practiced at this division.

The outward life continues. Shoes tied. Doors locked. Smiles offered. Conversations completed.

And beneath it all, an invisible weather.

A dark tide moving through the rooms of me.

Sometimes I think grief and love must share a wall.

I hear them through it at night.

A shifting. A creak of floorboards. The sound of one turning over in sleep while the other keeps watch.

The house is never entirely quiet.

Neither am I.

There are evenings when the sky lowers itself over the city like a heavy wool blanket and I feel an odd kinship with the clouds. We are both carrying more than we reveal. We are both trying not to break open over the wrong landscape.

The strange thing is that life asks so little acknowledgment of these private tempests.

The roses continue blooming.

The dishes wait patiently in the sink.

The moon appears each month with its ancient indifference.

And still the heart persists in its impossible labor, beating against the dark like a small lantern carried through deep water.

Not because it is fearless.

Not because it knows the way.

Only because there is someone it loves on the other side of the night.

So I go on.

A small boat.

A single light.

The sea beneath me speaking in a language I will never entirely understand.

The shore nowhere in sight.

And yet, somewhere beyond the fog, a faint brightness.

Enough to keep rowing.