Discipline Of Climate Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

Morning begins with small jurisdictions.
Kettle. Window. Heartbeats.
The soft arithmetic of light
entering a room you arranged
to hold both breath and distance.

The table remembers yesterday's work.
The chair holds its patient angle.
Even the walls understand
that order is not decoration.
It is governance.

Outside, the world rehearses urgency.
Deadlines. Headlines.
Voices mistaking volume
for leverage.

You watch the day assemble
the way a cartographer studies rivers.
Not for noise,
but for direction.

Systems reveal themselves
in quiet places.

In kitchens where labor repeats
without applause.

In offices where credit
changes hands
mid-sentence.

In corridors where power
moves like temperature.
Rarely announced.
Always felt.

You learned long ago
that agency begins at home.

Not the loud version
that demands witnesses,
but the private discipline
of self custody.

Who receives your time.
Who borrows your patience.
Who is permitted
to rearrange the furniture
of your attention.

You keep a ledger
no one else can read.

Not for grievance.
For calibration.

Patterns emerge.

The colleague who praises resilience
instead of sharing the load.

The ally who arrives
only when the photograph is taken.

The room that welcomes your labor
but edits your voice
for comfort.

You adjust accordingly.

Authority, you've discovered,
is not declaration.

It is design.

It is knowing which structure
must be reinforced
and which habit
should quietly expire.

It is closing certain doors
without announcing
that they were ever open.

At home, the evening resets the air.

Dishes placed back into orbit.
Tea breathing beside a book.
Windows open just enough
for the day to leave the room.

No audience required.

You understand now
what power actually resembles.

Not thunder.
Not spectacle.

But weather
that refuses to be owned.

Weather that knows its borders.
Weather that moves by its own law.

And when others search the sky
for the storm they expected,

they will find instead
something harder to command.

A climate
that answers
only to itself.