An amateur forecast

A whirlwind disturbs its way along the coast,

Consumes the sand of beaches and whips up the dust of festival grounds;

No one notices.

The sand is sharp stone and the dust rises in great smothering clouds

It’s too much fun to be a problem

People continue their raves and sun naps

Two people hustle up the hillside to breathe,

They watch the great billows of smog

She jokes her lungs must be black with it Like a smoker of fifty years;

Her coughs come up pure soot all week.

She can’t quite forget the blue staining on his hands though,

Similar in evidence of wrongness

Something much worse willingly consumed,

She doesn’t feel the same for weeks after it

Fists clenching

Like a habit she’d always had

She knows it’s foreign though

It feels manic.

She’d do it again even so, eagerly

The high was immense

The colours loud and the forest full of people on the same wave of electric navy

Weaving between silver caravans with chalkboard interiors that shake of dancing

But perhaps that’s not a good thing

The whirlwind cares neither way

Whipping up and up

For a moment there in the haze of blue she thought it would consume her entirely

But she just needed to breathe;

Wash the grime and dust away with water

The whirlwind didn’t leave, It was just quieter for a moment.

It continues still along the coast

Waves become choppier and batter the back float

The ambulances here are loud.

And angry

The whirlwind is subtle now

There is no one else who can see it as it comes closer and closer

Perhaps this is the eye.

Cold and full of shivers and sleeplessness And the familiar crutch of an old issue. Fading to fantasy.

She just hopes perhaps, that things will be the same after it has passed.

If it passes.

That the villages and homesteads still remain.

That the anthills they expect are not beehives in disguise, or empty husks entirely

It would surprise even her in her dread.

It would surprise those that do not see the storm even further

Even then,

When all is revealed… will the air soften away? It ought to, by all accounts.

But she is no meteorologist.

So best to batten down the hatches. Expect the long haul.

Just keep swimming

and dancing

and laughing

and living

like someone who cannot see the wind.