A Smoke Screen

Where you see smoke, is only a warning , where you see fire holds the answers.

Smoke doesn’t rise without reason.
It clings,
and crawls along the edges of the air,
and with every breath a warning.

You can pretend it isn’t there,
but your lungs will remind you.
You can deny the fire,
but your eyes will sting with its presence.

Smoke is never innocent.
It is memory of something burning,
or the promise that it soon will.

Sometimes what smolders is anger.
Sometimes sadness,
Sometimes it’s the deception,
that was forced too long into silence,
finally breaking into sparks.

And when it clears,
all that’s left is the trace of
the ashes that say:
you will never unknow this.

There is where the work begins.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-


Is smoke a warning, or a lure? Perhaps the fire it hides has only just begun to burn.

After the Eye

The calm at the center is never the end, only the breath before the breaking.

The eye of the storm

is a dangerous kindness

a pause that lets you believe

the worst has passed.

But brisk breezes always comes,

and when it does,

you learn the shape of your own shelter,

the sound of your own voice

calling yourself home.

After it breaks,

you walk barefoot through the wreckage,

feeling for the edges of what’s still whole.

Not everything scattered

was worth keeping.

Not everything left standing

is meant to stay.

Sometimes survival

is not about rebuilding

it’s about learning

how to breathe

in the spaces

the wind has cleared.

~Kerri-Elizabeth-

The storms we survive are not just weather they are mirrors, showing us what cannot be moved, and what we can no longer carry. This series walks those paths, one day at a time, through the shifting light after the eye has passed. The next part waits just beyond the next gust.