Don't call me a volcano,
I don't want to be a volcano!
Sometimes active,
Mostly dormant,
A stiff peak with indigestion,
Birthing igneous isles
across the seas,
Starving for eruption,
Hardening.
Waiting.

Call me a hurricane,
Say it with a tremble.
Never expect me,
Dread my return.
Never dormant,
Always hungry,
Carving my path,
Landmass by landmass,
Conquering, Striding,
Devastating.

Get your facts straight
Before you call me a disaster.

rays of light strike the wall where a window should be. the hurricane is over, we haven't yet taken down the boards.
the thing about the storm is how exhausting it can be. it can take so much out of you that all you can muster is enough energy to think. hours expended in forceful trance don't quite seem like hours at all.
more like something else entirely.

i rest my head on the back of a ratty couch. there's a coffee table before me that i'd like to prop my feet on if only i had the strength to. i notice Elizabeth cross legged atop it. she's smaller than i remember. not in the way of height or weight, but in a way i can't quite put my finger on. she looks straight through the boards on the window, though i feel her gaze on me.

a few minutes have gone away. following their departure, Elizabeth turns to me and asks,
"do you remember me from somewhere?"

She breathed with hurricane eyes and he fell in love with the way the waves crashed over her cheeks.

A freak and fruitful flower
I twirled in a frantic field of dandelions
The roots felt like the bald skin crawling on my bones
as they ****** the sunlight off of the structure of my stems
With the wisdom that the asphodels would find out
About the moment I planted myself in a hurricane last summer
He asked me to stay until the lilies grew back
Then his garden began to grow inside of me
during the spring time, and I think I must have drowned
Or maybe it was Autumn, when I found my piece of mind
I sat still long enough to allow myself to stay
If I refused to swallow the worms who ******* my tongue
If I was pure enough to drink the poison out of my vines
In a diligent essence of dignity, I might have tried
but in a clear perception of reality, I realized
I would always remain
A freak and fruitful flower
Same as I was, same as I ever would be.

some days are worse than others. the tide pulls me under most times.

no buoy or life jacket to keep me afloat.

it's more like an anchor dragging me down into the depths.

some days I can hardly even breathe. my chest hurts from the moment I wake up to the moment I try to sleep.

but I'm just sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness I can never swim in.

i look in the mirror and the smile I see is not the one you gave me so long ago.

its just a ghost of a memory I can never get back.

i'm getting better at tricking the darkness into letting it's grip off of my heart.

i'm getting better at keeping my head above water.

i'm getting better at pretending it's all alright even though I'm constantly breaking inside.

i don't know how much more I can break.

i sure do miss you being here.

you were my life jacket that kept me safe from the most devastating hurricanes.

i don't know what I did to make it all go away.

please come home.

A savoury taste lingers on the sailor’s tongue,
As he reaches out into the angry waves
To pull the moonlight from it’s rays
And winds its threads around a spool
Through the night he stays awake
Rapidly sewing together his dreams
He finds himself searching for a lighthouse built from his insecurities

But a fluorescent light dances above,
Far beyond a silver lining,
Left behind by a frozen voice
Of a past self lost in the eye of a hurricane.

the weatherman closes his umbrella & stands under the rain for a long time, after the taxi drives off.

earlier, he was on tv giving an update about the hurricane: the particulars on the direction, the wind's maximum speed, the storm signals - the weatherman could be reciting these from a telephone directory for all he cared. but he kept on saying the storm's name as if it was a lover scorned, yet still very much adored - like the telephone directory wasn't a book full of strangers at all; the weatherman cleared his throat several times as if it was the first name he ever recognized as being bad news. his hand shook through the tv screen when he hovered it over the satellite image of the violent winds.

what is the weatherman thinking about as he stares at his house, now? his rain boots are filling up with water & he just keeps on standing there, gathering what he can of her -

the weatherman lazily fumbles for his keys & unhurriedly enters his front door, like he is sorry to abandon the noise for an echoing quiet, like the four walls are infinitely more oppressive. & yet as droplets form into a series of familiar satellite images following him from room to room,

the weatherman will refuse to mop his unpolished floor. he will leave the water to dry & in the morning, revisit the path of her leaving by the water stains -

the most of what this weathered man can keep from the hurricane's namesake.

-j.g.