Where Thunder Sleeps

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published How hollow the hands of those expected to shoulder the sky, to keep the world from caving in while their own bones shudder beneath the weight. No instructions, only the echo of fathers who bore it in silence, the sound of doors closing before a question could come. How full the hearts of those told to stand still, who cradle their children’s laughter like a fragile flame that must not be blown out by the winds of their own sorrow. They hold the tenderest truths in the roughest palms a kindness they cannot speak, a sorrow they must postpone, a love mistaken for distance because they fear what might break if they let it show. How loud the storm inside the men who were never taught how to weep, who learned to swallow the rain before it could fall from their eyes. The sky gathers behind their heart, heavy as thunder, a quiet that fills the space where their voice should be. How far the distance for those who long to father softly but do not know how. They stand within their quiet ache, hide it beneath the steady beat of working hands, stand at the edge of their children’s joy and pretend it does not tear them open that it does not echo in the hollow spaces where their sighs live. How silent the moments that scatter them wide there is no gentle name for a man’s breaking, no tender word for the slow, quiet crumble of a heart too burdened to show its scars. Only stillness, only the ritual of being needed until they vanish behind it. How thin the line between being strong and becoming invisible. No one sees the tears they dare not cry, no one asks why they haven’t. They are either fortress or failure nothing between. How cruel the choice the world demands of a man: Be feared or be forgotten. No altar for tenderness, no blessing for the quiet ones who make their bodies into walls to shield the ones they love. And still still they stand, each breath a vow to hold back the flood, each heartbeat a promise to be the harbor, the warmth, the shelter their children need, even if it costs them the very marrow of their being. Still still they lift the world with arms that tremble, with hearts that ache for softness they never learned to keep. They hold the line in silence, their pain wrapped in calloused hands, their sadness buried beneath the slow, steady thunder of a love that will not let go. And in that quiet in the weight of unspoken grief, in the quiet resolve of men who carry the storm within there is a testament to something unseen, unbreakable, and fiercely, achingly alive.