Maybe Our Storm Is Over
By Shana Kirkland
It’s as though you held my lungs in your hands
Squeezing life into me.
You made my heart beat with each kiss.
You made my soul feel at rest.
My eyes could flawlessly see
With perfect vision when
Our future stood in front of me.
I could hear the sounds of the universe
So clearly when you spoke.
I could touch atoms in the air
And feel them on your fingertips.
I want to live in a forest
Where we carve our names on every tree
And as we walk around
the trees will guide us and remind us
That we will always be here together.
Some days we won’t be madly in love.
Some days we won’t even like each other.
But for the days that love shows up
Those are the days I will always live for.
Our love was fire, bright, warming.
It danced in a dark room.
It flickered from time to time
But always fought its way back.
It was dangerous, too hot, criminal
Arson at times
But it was definitely fire.
Red, yellow, orange, blue
It got out of control, wild.
Destroyed lives,
Destroyed trust,
Destroyed us.
Fire requires fuel and oxygen
And we gave it both.
Heat can scorch you when there’s too much.
We built a house and burned it down.
We built a life, and held hands as we torched it
But we keep rebuilding
And we keep matches around
Just in case we get too happy.
Then we count to three
We strike them at the same time
And throw them at each other‘s feet.
We burn bridges, then desperately
Build rafts with the leftover wood
to make our way back to each other.
I construct oars from all that is broken
And thrown away
Just to get back to you.
Now there are no bridges left and we float aimlessly on an ocean of doubt.
Sink to the bottom with me
Where we will be haunted by other shipwrecked lovers.
You’ve given me a smile that runs through my veins
One that can only come from the heart.
We’ve been the fairytale,
The happily ever after story that people wish for.
We’ve been the urban legend,
The cautionary tale of what not to become
Going blindly into the dark.
Every sound at night reminds me we are alive.
The midnight air touching my skin like your breath on the back of my neck invigorates me.
Trying to walk on clouds, I fall into them and they surround me clouding my vision as I search for the
way things used to be.
The center of my world, I orbit around your light.
I not only think you hung the moon,
I think you arranged the stars.
And although we’ve painted over van Gogh’s masterpiece, we’ve created our own world,
A world where I will stop time to fix things
That everyone else has given up on
Because I believe in love that much.
Things can always get better
Exhaustion can easily become rest.
When it is calm, that may mean there is a storm coming but just remember
When the storm is over, there’s a calm too.
Maybe our storm is over
