Storm Within a Storm

My body knows of the storm long before it arrives.

Pain billows and rolls up my body, foreshadowing the

black sky flowing over the horizon's rim.

Like the beautiful lighting flitting between heaven and earth.

Neurotransmitters spark and sizzle between axon and dendrite.

A chemical fulmination of pain across each synaptic chasm in my body.

I tremble and shudder in bed--not in fear from the storm's thundering groans,

but from the torment that my own body inflicts.

Immobile and silent, I can only listen as the weather rages around me.

It is not common knowledge that heavy clouds bear more than raindrops.

They birth the teardrops that streak down my face,

and remain glistening on my cheeks long after the storm departs.