The Blade of the Storm
There's a storm inside me,
ravenous, unyielding,
tearing through marrow and bone.
It howls my name,
shaking the walls of a house already crumbling.
No light reaches here.
No sound but the crash of waves, the gnash of
despair against the cliffs of my soul.
I reach for the blade like a lover,
its cold kiss a promise,
its edge a choir of sirens.
"Let me free you," it sings,
and I listen because nothing else will.
The sting is a hymn;
it drowns the storm for a moment,
but the silence never lasts.
Each etch I draw, a map-
a desperate attempt to chart
what cannot be spoken,
what cannot be seen.
But the ink runs red,
and the map leads nowhere
but back to places where
the wreckage began.
I sink deeper, my hands shaking,
my breath heavy with the weight of shadows.
I think, maybe this is all I am:
a body breaking under its own weight,
a canvas for pain,
a vessel for despair.
But then—
a flicker, faint as a candle's breath.
A whisper rises, not from the blade,
but from somewhere buried beneath the rubble:
"Wait. Just wait."
It is not loud. It is not strong.
But it is enough.
I drop the knife, and for the first time,
I see my scars not as failures,
but as battle lines,
proof I have survived every storm before this one.
The sea inside me begins to still,
its roar softening to waves that lap,
gentle, against the shore.
And I know—
there is a dawn waiting.
There is light just beyond this night.
The storm will not win.
I press my hands against the scars,
feel the pulse beneath them,
and I remember:
l am alive.
I am not the knife.
I am not the storm.
I am the survivor.
- CEE Cummings