THE WHISPER

 

The Whisper 

_________________________

Intuition,

That quiet murmur beneath the skin,

The voice we shush with a hiss—“Sssshh!”—

Loud as a slammed door,

The one we drown out, refuse to heed,

Dismiss as a fool’s whisper in the dark—

It’s always right, damn it,

A compass spinning true without a map,

Knowing with no evidence to lean on,

A gut’s stubborn hunch,

Subjective, unshakable,

Threadbare yet sharp as a blade’s edge.

It hums beneath the noise of our choices,

A warning flare we snuff with trembling hands,

Too proud, too blind, to bow to its truth.  

Our eyes locked once,

A current crackling through the air,

Electric arcs snapping between us—

Blue sparks that lit up the shadows,

Charged with a pull too fierce to name.

That jolt stripped decision bare,

Made logic a frail, trembling thing,

Too brittle to hold against the storm of you.

The rational crumbled, dust in my fists,

Forgotten the instant your lips brushed mine—

A first kiss that torched every lesson I’d learned,

A blaze swallowing reason whole,

Leaving me weightless, unmoored,

Surrendered to the heat of that single spark.  

For months—whole calendars of surrender—

I chose to leap, willingly, recklessly,

Into the whirlwind of your world,

Clambering through the open window

Of your red almost-sports-car,

Chrome glinting like a dare under streetlights,

Engine purring with the promise of flight.

I never asked where we were headed,

Never traced the road’s bend or end—

Just sank into the leather, wind whipping my hair,

Your grin a beacon I followed blind.

I believed, oh, I believed,

Silencing every twinge of doubt,

Every nudge to slam on the brakes,

To glance at the caution signs flashing red—

I ignored them all,

Racing headlong into the thrill,

A passenger drunk on the ride.  

It was a roller coaster,

A screaming plunge I never wanted to stop—

The stars overhead blazing like lanterns,

Hung in the thick, humid drape of a summer night,

Cloudless, endless, sticky with heat.

They burned so bright, those constellations,

Pinpricks of fire against a velvet sky,

So vivid I swore they’d never dim,

Never fade to the gray of ordinary days.

We rode that crest, you and I,

Tires humming, hearts pounding,

The world a blur beyond the windshield,

Every curve a vow to keep climbing,

To chase that high through the dark,

No thought of the drop waiting below.  

But it was us—us—who flickered out,

Two flames that devoured their own fuel,

Burned too hot, too fast, too wild.

We fizzled with wet matches in our hands,

Striking at nothing, sparks drowned in sweat,

No gasoline left to feed the fire.

The stars stayed, but we couldn’t—

Our light dulled to a smudge,

A candle guttering in a drafty room,

The hum of your engine now a ghost in my ears,

The red car a memory parked in the past.

Intuition had screamed,

A banshee I’d gagged and bound,

And now its echo lingers—

A bitter “I told you so”

In the wreckage of our runaway dream.  

Looking back, I see the skid marks,

The tire tracks veering off the path,

The moment I should’ve gripped the wheel,

Heeded the voice I buried deep.

Your world was a siren’s song,

A rush that swept me under,

And I swam, gleeful, into the undertow,

Dazzled by your beams, your reckless pull.

But the shine wore thin,

The humidity turned to a chill,

And here I stand, on the roadside of us,

Counting the months that slipped away,

The stars still bright,

But cold now, distant,

Watching me sift through the ashes

Of a love that flared, then faded,