I keenly watched the plates spin and spin and with them my house of emotion. The winds swept up my porch and broke into my home. Windows burst and walls cracked. Down the stairs crept a stray, feasting on the obscure, searching the pipes for warmth, chasing after any notion of life. As the roof lifted off its moorings I sat and watched. As the shutters tore off their hinges I leaned forward and surveyed the flowers. Turbulent times had plucked leaves from their stems, had wrenched pain from my heart. Still – outside the steady walls of a hidden chamber the winds subsided, withdrew at the muffled cry of a babe, so delicate and fresh, unblemished and whole, upending all movement, pausing, resting. The plates for one instance halted their cryptic grind. And nothing happened.

Still – I stood and observed the frozen scene, a landscape of my innermost: A house shattering, the walls peeling off, revealing the hidden chamber, the unseen child. Here I paint the flowers delicately, they remind me of my grandmother. She whispers in my ear, consoles me, as I cradle the child. All ruptures and expels outwards, and yet this heart of hearts remains untouched, is not breached, cannot die.

Child, the universe sends for you, gives rise to you. Life inside your infant body thumps. I hear it through the concrete walls, through the cracks, up the stairs, soaring, then tenderly brushing against my heart, speaking softly, providing solace. Should all plates break I will continue my watch. The winds will pick up again, the same play repeating. I know it. I trust it, though I do not like it. Eventually the winds descend, crawl back into a quiet space, lay down their lashes like the wrappings of a shawl in which I drape your tiny frame for warmth and rest. Sleep, little one, you are safe.

On the cold ground I rest. I rest my breath from having spent inhaling life so deeply. My cells break open and in creeps the sun to fill me. The emptiness provides a space for the warmth I crave. My muscles chase a deep ache around the confines of my heart. I am rattled.

I am here now, there is no denying it – and watch the sky playout before me, an inaudible act, a quiet shift in time. I know it passes, so does the cold. Stacks of ice and my body splayed on top. What shelf parks my love, which beats within? I have lost track, not of the clouds passing over me. I grab one with my soul and cling to its vapor as if for direction. In turbulent times I park my limbs right here and stretch out of myself.

Fibers across the shell I house day in day out seep through the ice and wrap themselves around love, caressing the light, dim and shaken, but in its entirety never disturbed.

An unknown finger traces the spine of my back, moves across my neck and tickles my ear. I do not know it. I relax in its presence like a child in the arms of its mother. Breath returns to me. A beat stirs my heart. In cracks I feel water release from ice, though I cannot see, I know the sun shines. I slowly stand on my feet, then leap. The trust I lost pulls every raindrop back into the cloud reversing pain into love. I am still here.