Flash Flooding
A poem by Julia R. DeStefano
Flash Flooding
You are so quiet.
How many storms must you carry?
Weighing upon your shoulders like Atlas.
How many storms are you made of?
Your silent thunder
pushing me away with both hands
in this whiplash shift
from light to pitch dark skies.
Another unexpected downpour
when the forecast called for sun.
And I feel hallucinatory.
Doubtful of myself, of my experience
as your lightning strikes.
Cracking through my heart
to sever all I believed to be true.
I know you not in these moments,
though I long for your smile
like an overwrought mind longs for rest.
A cool breeze to caress the cheek.
Glistening hair to fall around you,
not unlike October’s leaves dancing upon air.
For I too am alive with storms,
though we soften for the ones we care for.
Because the relationship of our dreams
is not found but created.
Sometimes among the heaviest storms.
But I can’t throw my arms around a tornado
refusing my love and its stability.
Not when that tornado is of the mind.
© Julia R. DeStefano
