The Storm
Ruminating on the awe of nature’s beautiful violence
Last night, I bore witness to a reckoning.
As I was finishing a novel called The Overstory — which reminds humans that we are quickly draining the earth of resources and, due to our own pitiful hubris, we will soon eradicate ourselves — a thunderstorm rolled in on a wave of darkness, shaking its electric fists.
A lover of the violence only the sky can create, I cracked my window open to let the storm pour into my apartment until my bones shook. The unpredictability of the thunder made my heart race, as a minute of silence would be truncated by a crack in the atmosphere louder than human sin.
The rain slapping my windows like so many tiny punishments called me to place my hand on the glass. Among the warmth of the summer sun that had been baked into the panes, I felt the crackle of electricity the air deposited on my building as an afterthought — or a warning.
The black sky flickered as the gods played with the light switch and lightning giddily burned its way across the city. Every so often a bolt would stitch the horizon in two, leaving imprints on my eyelids reminiscent of snapping neurons. I knew that if I could touch one of those white streaks it would feel like the sun had landed on earth.