I'm lying in my bed, freshly awake from a dream of him, and I can feel the earthquake slowly subsiding. The rivers of lava have solidified on the mountain as well, swelling it bigger, standing solid and proud against time and weather. I'm lying in my bed, and I close my eyes because the shaking is dying down, and suddenly I can hear the silence. The tectonic plates inside me have been reorganising themselves for millions of years now, shifting aimlessly and drifting around, colliding occasionally and shaking the core, shattering and breaking apart, flooding my crevices. But now it feels like they have fallen into their places. The two giants have connected at last, united and interlocked. They match perfectly. This has never happened before. And the fault line where they coalesce is flawless and uninterrupted; the slit is already melting into memory, intertwined till the end of time. Open-wound whitened to a scar, in the earth, all along my body. Even the hurricane moved past, only still water inside and under. Everything is in place, everything settled. It took a million years, but it feels like coming home after a war. This is what peace must feel like.
