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.