Calm Weather Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

Rooms learn quickly
how to name a storm.

Raise your voice
and they will point to thunder.
Stand your ground
and they will call it pressure.

You learned early
that weather is a language
spoken long before
anyone says a word.

Some arrive like lightning,
brief, admired,
gone before the air can answer.

Some move like wind,
loud enough
to feel important.

You arrive differently.

You read a room
the way coastlines read the tide,
watching which walls
tilt toward gravity
and which doors
only pretend to open.

You speak when the air
can carry weight.

You let certain silences remain,
not surrender
but space
where truth
will settle on its own.

They search for the storm in you.
They say calm is compliance,
or distance,
or some quiet form of retreat.

They have not studied pressure.

Atmosphere persuades.
Temperature decides.

Lower a room
by a single degree
and watch the noise
forget its purpose.

You do not argue
with every wind.
You do not chase
each restless cloud.

Energy is not endless,
and weather, like trust,
is best spent
where it changes the land.

So you stand
not above the storm
and not beneath it
but steady
in the open sky
where movement begins.

And when the climate shifts,
as climates always do,

it will not be remembered
as the moment you shouted.

It will be remembered
as the moment
the air
changed.