Whirlwind
Albany Blackburn

​Last summer, you broke a man’s heart, 
and you broke the man too.

The skies turned a sickly green, 
and the clouds spiraled around 
your head. The wind howled out in 
anguish, like an infant that knows only 
that to scream is to survive.
You hid yourself away, tucked inside the 
bathtub, with your old twin-sized mattress 
on top. And you stayed there like that until the 
wee hours of morning, long after the storm 
had cried itself to sleep. Long after 
the last residual teardrops fell.

There’s a saying that floats around here:
“If you wait a minute, the weather will change.”

By necessity, when you dream of love,
you remember the tornado. And yet, 
here you are now, daring 
to melt into the candlelight and 
bubbles. Rising from the bath, 
coquettishly, as if pinpricks of cold air 
are more akin to goosebumps of anticipation 
than to shards of glass.
And smiling at your reflection in the
mirror, even when, in the steam, it offers 
only a blurry suggestion of yourself.
​

Albany (Harvey Mudd '23) is from Nardin, OK and is currently a physics major.