There's a hoard of chaos all around me
You seem like the eye of a tornado
Chaos surrounds you,
even when your soul has that calmness of the eye
Getting close to the tornado now
A sea of dust, destruction, and death surrounds me
The chaos in my soul can only be brought to dust
once I reach the eye
A price to pay for a deep dive inside your soul.

I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind.
My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin
like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells.
She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind
mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out,
her pulse beating on the surface of paper, cloth and wood.
She searches for artifacts that match/mismatch my cancer-
the progeny the tornado left scattered in the brick and wallboard.

I listen to the wind and rain ping on my ward’s windows
unaware of her scavenging, unable to sleep in the harsh light
that doesn’t erode the pain or the glitter of memory,
the constant Kabuki of nurses, doctor and blood drawers,
the chant of machines that make me mistake
the sterile for the sacred, the soundtrack for the profound.
I see my wife in the mud, inches from my eyes,
putting away the jagged, clear granules of our life.

Just sit still. Look
out the window and wait
for the wind to change,
and the tornado will teach you
to feel relief when waking up
held by no one.

I loved this old crooked tree
that refused to grow straight
with the sky but willed itself
to stretch with the horizon,
limbs resisting what every oak
near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

It had a brother, long since cut down,
its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.
Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,
had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback
to its grief, its refusal to be another proper tree,
limbs desiring earth’s comfort to cloud’s hope.

The tornado swept south and
my old brick house was
left a blasted finger to its whims.
The old crooked tree was uprooted
like all the others oaks, yet granted the mercy
of caressing its waiting brother in its final fall.

My wife spent the time after the uprooting
like all the others after the storm,
dealing with the adjusters, collecting
the ashes, saving the memories that remained.
No thoughts of trees preoccupied her
and I was convalescing from cancer surgery.

Before we moved into a temporary place,
before the winds of rebuilding where beginning,
I asked for a quick drive by to see the damage
because I only ,imagined the destruction
from the aching confines of a hospital bed
and needed to firmly root it to mind and soul.

The reality was a little worse than the imagining.
The roof was gone, only an L of bricks remained.
The PTSD, anxiety, the sheer exhaustion
was already planting in my wife.
I cried for her. I cried for the last sight
of the old tree hugging stump, earth beneath.

I’ve never laid eyes on you before.
But I’ve felt you.
I’ve felt your rumble,
bellowing against the walls
of my house.
And I’ve heard you.
Your lonely howl
sighing against the small window.
And you’ve taken away my sight;
The way you ****
light out of a house,
a deep cry filling the air.
Yet the worst is
that even in the dark,
I can smell you;
toxic fumes billowing
in the humid air.
& As you came at night,
the only sign of you
was your roar,
the shattering of wood,
and each light
dropping in the city.
You may be beautiful,
but you left behind
violent demolition.

I had the sudden thought “...and I’m the thing he doesn’t mind losing”

It was a little tornado of thought that I quickly put inside a mason jar and placed on a wooden shelf in my living room.

I sat on the couch across from it observing it and watching it stir.

“What a thought”

How destructive it could be to let that little storm out. It could grow and it’s winds could slowly start to peel off the walls and start to take down the roof.


So, I closed my eyes, cupped my hands and I thought of your smile–warm and tender. When I opened my eyes, a seedling had grown over my left palms.

“How beautiful”

I contemplated putting it in glass encasement, to watch it from afar, but instead I decided to take it outside and plant it near the middle of my front garden.

“This is what I want to cultivate” a flourishing sprout of life; a garden of plenitude.

I feel like a zombie.
I walk around aimlessly
trying to find
ways to sleep.
Epicly Failing.
I can’t help
but walk around
through this time & space
of sleeplessness

The sun has gone down.
There is life everywhere.
Crying, dazing.
I am like the second  
& not the first.
As far as the eye can see
there is a void.
Where are the lights?
Where is my safety?
As far as the eye can see
there is darkness.

I sat there in my apartment
eating a cheeseburger
from Hardee’s on 15th Street. The
sound of my VCR and my
own thoughts comforted me. My friend
the internet kept me connected
to my boyfriend which I appreciated. The weather
outside had told me of strange burst of winds.
The radio had told me
of tornadoes in Tuscaloosa. A girl in December
told me I was safe to go home if
I lived nearby. School was over
and I didn’t feel like cooking, which
explained the Hardee’s. I chewed and chewed
like I had not a care in the world. I was eating,
I was in my apartment,
I was safe.

Then everything went black
and silent in my apartment.
Everything except the strange
sound outside my apartment. I heard it
just after my apartment was silenced.
“What the hell is that?” I asked myself,
because I lived alone. I walked
to the window, the blinds already shut.
I peeked outside. I saw the devil outside my window.
It was as tall as the sky, as wide as a mile, and angry. It roared
and threw everything it swallowed randomly.
It was 100 feet away, and coming closer. I closed
my blinds and blinked.  Disbelief set in for a moment.
“I did not just see that.” I told myself.
“You should look again”, myself told me.
So I peeked out the blinds again. The devil
was still there and coming closer. It was
not a nightmare. It was not
a figment of my imagination.
It was there and I was in danger.
I felt the danger wash over me. Fear
tasted like impending death
that day, bitter and stuck in my throat.
I grabbed my cell phone and a quilt
that use to rest on my parents’ bed
until I was allowed to take it.
I ran to the bathroom,
still tasting fear. I called
my mother as the devil
came closer.

“Mom! There’s a tornado outside and it’s coming to get me!!”
I’ll admit, I panicked,
but you would too if
the devil was right outside your door
and you didn’t know
if this was the end.  
“Now is the time to go into survivor mode”
my mother informed me in a calm voice.
So after screaming and panicking and
not dying of a panic attack,
I closed my eyes and became calm.
I waited for a calming outside
before I explored the outside. There was
some damage to my apartment, significant damage
to my apartment building, 7 out of 8 of my windows
in my van were imploded from
the pressure of the devil,
worse damage to my connecting neighborhood
(but no deaths, though somewhere not far
from there a house killed some students)
and no Alberta City.
My damages felt insignificant in comparison to that.

Trees are
gone forever.
There is
a lack,
a void.
It smells  
of pine
and emptiness.
Flashes of
that day
at the 
surface of
my memory.
I remember
how it
use to
be before.