poetic narrative

After the Eye

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Even calm carries the memory of the storm.”

The storm had passed, or so it seemed. Branches lay scattered across the shoreline, reminders of winds that tore through with little warning. The air was strangely still, too still, as if the cove itself held its breath. In the eye’s quiet aftermath, nothing moved, yet everything remembered.

Neighbors drifted back to their routines, but the silence between them said more than their words. The pause after chaos was never empty; it was full of everything no one dared to name.

After the eye, the silence stays,

broken branches, forgotten days.

Calm deceives, but truth remains,

etched in whispers, etched in veins.

The storm retreats, yet leaves behind,

the weight of echoes, sharp in mind.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

And in that stillness, when everyone believed the worst had passed, a single sound rose again, too faint to name, but impossible to ignore.

Echoes That Return

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Every sound carries further than we imagine, weaving through silence, returning as echoes that remind us nothing is ever truly gone.

The cove was louder than my thoughts,

laughter bending against the stillness,

pressing its way into my chest.

I wanted to disappear,

to quiet what I could not control.

But vanishing has never healed a wound,

it only hides it deeper.

So I stayed.

I breathed.

I noticed.

The ache was not only mine.

It was the echo of every person

who has stood just outside the circle,

close enough to hear joy

but too far to be held in it.

The world is small,

and what we say travels farther than we know.

Words can cross water,

build bridges,

or set fires.

Today I chose to be still,

to let the echo pass through me

without becoming me.

~Kerri-Elizabeth ~

“When the next echo returns, will it stir the stillness like a storm’s edge, or settle in the silence as a truth softened by time?”