What It Looked Like

I could
          describe the storm.
Its completeness. The scenery of its impact-
                        the devastation,
or sketch,
in detailed imagery,
         a picture
of the calm that came before, parading, flaunting
an illusion of peace and
           safety.
I could
tell you that the
sun illuminated dewy grass, and the
sky was bluer
                                                  than blue-
                                                  than usual.
That the
    air was 

          warmer.
That for
      just a
           minute,
every
living creature and
act of nature held its breath.
That there
was a hush just before the operatic swell.
That for
a fleeting moment, the planet stilled before it
tilted
before the meteor hit. 

And it was chaos and the picture was not pretty.  

Do you want
to hear about the
smear of people
struck lifeless where they
stood,
about
                            the pooling blood, sticky red, where their heads fell against seared

                                                                     rocks, their bodies tossed with force and 

                                                                                then the corpses, laying in an
                                                                                                           apocalyptic,
                                                                                                           barren
                                                                                                           landscape
                                                                                                    for days on end?

I could draw you in this way
              and hook you with harpoon of view and speak for pages of what it

looked
like,
make you queasy from the poison in my pen, and all
the power wielded in a story.  I could haunt with
                                                        words,
foreshadow what you know is

coming
but I think you've heard all this before. 
I think it’s worn. 
And this is just a
metaphor. 

And what it felt like is more my

             specialty.

So I want
to tell you
what happened. 

Before and
           after.  

I want to
tell you that
it was unavoidable 

and had there been a warning, still it could not have been prevented.  

I need to tell
you the price we
paid, simply for
believing
in the picturesque – in the fairy tale,
for not
noticing the side streets
littered along the way, or the solemn mockery of the ornamented, bawdy lawns- the pink flamingos
                       stuck lopsided in the sod, or how the sheen on the green of the grass was strangely bright – unnatural. 
The pleasant-ness of it all. 
We ignored the prophecy
of those prepared, those who stocked
their pantries, crying out that the
          end was near.  

It all reeked of that sharp, distinct aroma of rotting dreams amid denial. 
We chose to look away from what we lacked, to inhabit what wasn't
                                                 real

and I think, in fact, it rained the day
                                                                                                                     you left,
and I think that                                           it was evening. 
I don’t remember what                               the sky looked like, 

or whether or not it was

warm.  

But I know the planet tilted and that it was my voice that 

broke the silence                            your absence

left a crater in all I ever took for granted and that 

the shock                                       came in waves
for months and months                   I was blinded.  

And when I regained sight, I saw our house in pieces, and had to pull my body from the rubble and instead of we, there was only me, and that just the idea now of us seems far away.

Maybe, it’s melodrama.      But,                  maybe it’s all I know.  

Maybe
            how I feel
is my landscape and the scenery of               what you left behind
is stark and more
                          real
than the
ground I stood on when you were here.