“Her Forecast Was Never Fair”
by Adena M’lynn
Grief swelling behind the levees of her ribs,
where childhood never learned to swim.
She carries a drowning girl in her lungs,
gasping between grocery aisles
and conversations that start with
“How are you?”
and expect a lie in return.
Her smile is earthquake-proof—
reinforced with sarcasm and silence.
But beneath her skin,
fault lines shift without warning.
She’s learned to talk without trembling,
even when the past erupts
like lava from a fault she didn’t create
but still gets blamed for.
Her body is a wildfire zone.
A red flag warning
every time she’s touched without consent.
Even kindness feels like a spark—
too close, too warm,
and suddenly she’s back in the blaze
of hands that branded her
before she could spell the word “no.”
She’s lived through landslides of trust.
One betrayal
pulls down a mountain of belief.
She builds relationships on shaky soil,
hoping no one notices
how much of her foundation eroded
before she turned thirteen.
Tornado sirens go off at 2 a.m.
Panic spins her brain in circles,
thoughts like debris smashing through sleep.
She wakes in a house still standing
but never feels safe under its roof.
Her weather patterns don’t make the news.
No headlines for the hurricanes in her memory.
No FEMA for the girl
who had to evacuate her own body to survive.
She learned to forecast her own pain—
reading the barometer of her chest,
the pressure behind her eyes.
But still, no one believes a storm
unless it breaks something they can see.
They call her dramatic,
when she’s simply disaster-prepared.
She’s not overreacting—
she’s just seen too many bridges collapse
to believe in crossing one barefoot again.
Each day, she rises like the sun
after another long night of tremors.
She walks through aftershocks and ash
in lipstick and grace,
but if you look closely,
you’ll see the sandbags in her purse,
the fire extinguisher in her smile,
the evacuation plan written in her eyes.
She’s not broken.
She’s rebuilding.
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