Nancy Machlis Rechtman

Silence in the Storm
 
The yard was a desert
The soil was cracked and parched
And the hydrangeas were no longer
Bouncing merrily along the fence
But instead appeared to have fainted from the relentless heat.
Even the birds were wilting
And their songs remained bottled up
Inside them.
 
Just before I walked through the door
To return to the blessed air conditioning
Silently thanking Mr. Willis Carrier
I felt an eerie pressure on my skin
And the hairs on my arm stood on end
As a barely perceptible shift filled the air
Like a ghost was hovering over my shoulder
I looked at the sky which had been the picture-perfect blue
Of the ocean reflected in a baby’s eyes
But it had now faded to a dangerous grey
And the clouds had become shelves
Stacked up across the horizon.
 
A howl of thunder crashed through the air
Followed by a scorch of lighting streaking across the churning sky
As if Zeus himself had angrily aimed it at my house
And in the span of a heartbeat
The dam was unplugged
And torrents raced through every furrow in the yard
While the house was throttled
By the ravages of the wind
And raindrops became rocks pelting my home relentlessly.
 
The savagery of the storm engulfed me
But I soon noticed there was a space in between each droplet
That was like a pocket of peace
When the world became so quiet
Nothing could be heard
And I knew this silence was when I needed to pay attention
Not the madness
Because in the end
This was all that would matter.

Nancy Machlis Rechtman has had poetry and short stories published in Your Daily Poem, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Impspired, miniMAG, Discretionary Love, Young Ravens, and more. Nancy has had poetry, essays, and plays published in various anthologies. She wrote freelance Lifestyle stories for a local newspaper, and she was the copy editor for another paper. She writes a blog called Inanities at https://nancywriteon.wordpress.com.