Reuters photo
By
Mirissa D. Price
Someone once told me a story
of how the world would be still
when in my lover’s arms, I first fell.
So hold me in the storm, I cry. But I no longer remember
the feeling of your hand
softly touching my face. The weight of
a concrete foundation
firmly grounding our home.
The will.
The insurance.
The journal you wrote.
Valuables run through my mind. To put
in the dishwasher.
The deed.
The album.
The spare key to our home.
The air smells of silence.
And the sky fills of
absence, to put on the top rack.
With the note you ‘just had to
leave.’
When I told you I couldn’t. Leave
my ill uncle. Feel the water
rush on my toes
and the wind pry at my life. The windows
battered by the branches of a red Doppler
the news calls a story. My heart calls
a home. Oh, Mother of nature –
In the eye of a storm
she takes you from my bed
and soaks me
in her tears. Of knowing the glass walls will endure
to look out at the wreckage – the roof of our life
scattered. Under mud, the world that we built
too weak.
To just hold onto
hope, I whisper alone. And let go
of your memory. Let go
of our shrubbery. Let go of
this life soaring prey to the storm.
I see the Caribbean land at my door. It doesn’t knock.
Still, it floods in. Over the towels piled, the
furniture stacked.
If I wake up
next to the letter you wrote me, under
a shingle growing mold. I’ve decided.
I’ll still hold you. In
the red Doppler image
the world watches the sand. In the memory
I buried. I’ll hold down our home.
Mirissa D. Price
Mirissa D. Price is a 2019 DMD Candidate at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and future pediatric dentist. As a child, doctors told Mirissa that she would live in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, crippled by pain. Instead, Mirissa uses her medical experiences to inspire others, living each day with a passion to spread pain-free smiles through her dental work, writing, improv comedy performances, and nonprofit work with children. Her writing fills the pages of Yellow Chair Review, Tuck Magazine, The Huffington Post, Five2One Magazine, and more. You can stay up to date with Mirissa’s writing at mirissaprice.wordpress.com and follow @Mirissa_D_Price on Twitter or Facebook. You can even take home a few inspirations of your own, at Mirissa’s Etsy shop, A Smile Blooms.