forgive
forget
smile

Wind lifts the sea like sheets from a bed,
the sky turns a soft bruise, grey and purple,
gulls fold into commas above the water,
and the first whitecaps practice saying my name.

The storm begins to tune its instruments,
a low drum under my ribs, a snare in the dune grass,
rain smells like iron and new linen,
clean and exact, as if the day can be washed.

Noise becomes a blanket.
It wipes the fingerprints of everything I could not fix,
it drowns the rooms that echo,
it teaches my breath to move like tide, in and out.

Lightning writes brief, honest sentences,
thunder answers with a simple yes,
and in that loud grammar I finally hear quiet,
the kind that makes room for a person to exist.

I sit still and let the weather keep me,
salt on my lips, cold on my wrists,
the world is busy and I do not have to be,
I only have to listen while the water kneels and rises.

I have lived at the edges of myself,
where storms meet silence,
where the pendulum swings
between too much and not enough
never finding that gentle place
they call center.

My body remembers every earthquake,
every sudden drop,
every moment I was too small
or too loud for this world.
Now it flinches at stillness,
searches for familiar chaos
in the quiet of ordinary days.

I take my vitamins,
count my steps like rosary beads,
measure sleep in careful hours,
eat the colors that promise healing
but my nervous system
still hums with ancient alarms,
still mistakes peace
for the eye of a storm.

What is normal
when you've been stretched
between breaking points?
When calm feels like waiting
for the other shoe to drop?
When your body speaks a language
of hypervigilance
that no amount of green tea
can translate back to rest?

Some days I am a tightrope walker
on a wire made of breath,
balancing between
the exhaustion of too much feeling
and the hollow ache
of feeling nothing at all.

wish I knew first off
that facing your fears — sometimes
means facing yourself