Let’s Call This My Sweet Revenge

The sky splits open like it remembers. Lightning snaps to attention across the plains, sharp as an order no one questioned. There’s a storm in me tonight— one trained to wait, one taught endurance by slammed doors and swallowed screams.

I know what raised him. A childhood of shouting and quiet aftermaths, pain nailed into the walls and called normal.

Then came the uniform. Boots lined up straight by the door. Beds made tight enough to erase a body. He learned command—how silence can sound like obedience, how control wears a clean face.

The rain falls and falls—and that house stays stained. It runs over his precious medals, over pressed fabric and locked jaws, over rooms where hold the line meant no one was allowed to leave.

Nothing lifts. Nothing cleans.

Windows blow out like breached orders. Walls fold. Every excuse he saluted loses its footing and spins.

Let the tornado tear through memory—through whiskey-soaked nights and rehearsed apologies:

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I promise I won’t mess this up.”

You are a storm of destruction.

This is for every time I learned to stand still so you could move forward, hoping the damage would pass faster.

Blow the whole damn thing away.

The sirens scream like witnesses— like me, who was trained not to speak.

You will carry this longer than you carried me. It will surface in the quiet. I won’t follow you. What you did will.

This is not forgiveness. Let’s call this my sweet revenge.

When the storm clears, there is nothing left for you. No flag to fold. No rank to outrun what you did.

For the first time, I am no longer enlisted—no longer collateral damage in a man’s war with himself.