The Storm

This moment is graven into my mind.

The wind was blowing;
it usually does.
Your cheeks were red,
seared by the chill air.
Your eyes, blue,
as though the spring sky had surrendered its color to your gaze to make way for the roiling clouds.
Your hair, golden,
a wavy halo swirling with an untamed ferocity whose appeal you will never understand,
dancing unchecked with the outriders.

You were a Norse legend, a shieldmaiden of old,
fair and beautiful, a harbinger of the storm to come.

And the storm did come.

Rains crashed down, lashing my unprotected body,
thunder shook the ground beneath my feet,
as the lightning ripped the sky asunder.

And in the midst of the whirling downpour,
I gloried in it,
because the storm is life.

The gray overcast, the empty fog,
that drains until there is nothing left,
so softly that you hardly notice,
and leaves you bloodless and cold,
that is my fear.

But the storm rages on,
a churning mass of pain and hardship and heartbreak,
and though it may shatter me on the rocks,
blood courses through my veins, hot despite the icy rain,
and the storm is nothing to be feared.


For some, the sun shines and the sky smiles,
but I've always chased the lightning.