Anticipation
The air shifts before the storm—
a stillness,
heavy and sharp,
like the weight of something unseen
that everyone can feel.
I brace.
Hold my breath
against the knowing.
A leaf clings longer than expected,
its edges curling inward,
gathering what’s left of itself—
knowing
that surrender
is inevitable.
The sky darkens early,
and the coyote’s distant cry
echoes through the dusk.
He too, senses the turn of things.
Grief begins in the body,
long before the loss arrives—
a tightening of chest,
the tremble of anticipation,
blood rushing like a river
toward a fall
I cannot see
but can already hear.
I fear if I let the tears come,
they will flood
until all the rivers swell and overflow.
That the tears will never end,
carving valleys deep within me,
etching loss into every cell.
I am the tree that refuses to release,
clutching brittle branches
to a silent, merciless sky.
Still, the earth beneath my feet hums:
Let go.
And yet—
how do I let go of breath
that carries their name?
In the quiet of dawn,
a single bird calls
and waits.
The sun rises—
the way it always does—
patient in its knowing
that light,
like grief,
will come in waves.
This, too, is life.
To love so fiercely
that we grieve
long before the end.
To tremble at the threshold
of what is sacred,
what is fleeting.
A breeze stirs.
The leaf releases.
And I breathe again.
- Shawnee Thornton Hardy
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