Hurricane Without a Name

There’s something in the air when a hurricane is about to hit.

A charge, a shift, a calm.

The sky can be blue and cloudless,

but in your bones you’re already starting to brace.

Everything tightens, the hatches are battened.

The sandbags wait in boxes beside the bed,

anything that could fly is pulled close.

Sometimes, the worst part of the storm is preparing for it.

The anticipation, the hum, the dread.

Watching the cone narrow around you,

the certainty that something is coming,

and that all you can do to survive it

is to let it happen.

By the time you retreat to the safest corner,

the sky has turned dark.

The walls groan around you.

You squeeze your eyes shut

and try not to imagine what is being torn away.

For a while, you may believe the world has always sounded like this.

That the windows have always rattled,

that you have always been waiting for the roof to lift away.

But it always passes.

Even the hurricane without a name.

Though it can feel endless while you are inside it,

especially when weathered alone.

And somewhere beyond the wreckage,

light begins to press through the clouds.

Slowly at first.

Then all at once.

There will come a day when the sun warms your face

and you will stand beneath it, astonished

by all the things the storm didn’t take.

You’ll almost forget

there was ever a hurricane at all,

and you will stop mistaking every change in the air

for its return.