Weather Poem by Ruby Gitonga

There's a kind of quiet that used to mean rest
and now it means something I haven't named yet.

I keep checking the sky like it owes me an answer,
counting the space between lightning and sound,
telling myself the storm is still far off,
still someone else's weather.

But I've started speaking carefully,
folding my sentences smaller,
the way you fold a map you're afraid to need.
Somewhere a door is still open.
I just don't know anymore
which way the wind is blowing through it.