Now.
a poem


Then.

Then, I used to be able to hold the thunder in my hands. It was mine. My body trembled in time with its wild rumble.
We were one.
The lightning, a toy I let slide through my fingers, dance across my mind, and light up my heavy nights.
Something to surround me.
Hold me.
I would face it; stick my head towards it like a dog with its head out the window.
I prayed for it to come.
The thunder ran over my face, down my spine.
Covering me.
Cooling me.
Relieving me from the warm air.
It saved me from drowning in the fog. Disappearing completely. Something to connect me to the technologic world I had been dropped from.

Now.

Now it is not the creature at the other end of the reigns I am holding onto. Looking down, I don’t recognize what animal I am fighting with.
Threatening to pull me from my comfortable chair.
It yanks.
Tugs.
Each time reminding me that I am loosing control.
I watch myself pull the bed, then push it.
Wrestle with it.
Desperate to move it. I need another position to sleep in. One that doesn’t match any other I’ve slept in before.
I need to be new.
Fresh.
Clean.
Finally in place I remember the mother I’m expecting home any minute. What will she think?
Will she know of my struggle?
My momentary loss of control?
That I let the creature win?
Will she see the scratch marks its left on my skin?
The whole in my façade, that is slowly growing?
Pandora’s box.
From it escaping my sanity and replacing it with fear and anger. I feel them growing inside me; a seed, or maybe just a tease of what is to come.
Now.
Even more terrified I push the bed back. Fighting with it ten times harder than before.
Now.
Now desperate.
Desperate to be back in place. To sit back on my delicate stool, even though I know it could tip at any moment.
Now.
Now the thunder does not roll of my skin. Its once healing rush now is shattering.
The thunder sneaks in through the whole in my façade.
Quaking my insides.
Rattling them.
Jumbling them beyond recognition.

Then.

Then it stops.
Its over.
The rain subsides. Clears. With its departure I am granted a temporary patch to place over the whole.