Indiana Thunder

Indiana Thunderstorm

It looks desolate where I am but in a beautiful way. When I woke up this morning the sky was rolling with purple thunderheads.There was thunder so loud it rattled the windows. Lightning lit up the sky in random patches, as the trees like dancers in the wind. Raindrops fell with the force of bullets into the pavement.The air smelled like beauty and freedom, and whipped the hair back to my face, hugged my body, and tried to carry me unto the sky and infinity.

The noise explodes from overhead seconds after a flash of light, ripping apart the clouds. Immediately a gale begins, rain and wind lashing at the house as the sky is devoured by angry Gods rumbling their discontent with yells in the key of power. The gale is both soft and violent in my ears, the combined force of mother nature and father sky creating an inhuman battlefield over mortals who curl tight in their beds and fear the awesome power. Every broken home reeks of thunder, our planet is no different.

The thunder is distant now, moving towards the east and taking some of the momentary violence with it. Where before it was a roar, now it starts as a whisper, and a reminder of all the fury it can possess. It slips across the purple red sky, illuminated by flashes on erratic flickering patches that mimic the dull brown squares of the farms beneath it. The distance, both above and below is palpable. The square farms lead on and on, occasionally a desolate farm house looms near, but you pass it and again are surrounded by trees and the dusty brown nothing, dried each day in harsh sunlight only to be re-annointed with sky tears each evening as the thunder again destroys and rebuilds the world with a violence that splinters all concept of silence. The possibility frightens me, I finally realize that in this beautiful world I am merely a speck. I will not outlast the childhood fear of thunder.

The sounds of the rain have stopped, but the lighting flashes ever closer and the thunder rumbles to a foundation shattering growl that sends chills up my spine and daggers into my heart. Perhaps it is returning for me. I see its fury shattering my windows and showering me in a spray of silver fragments that bite at my delicate, mortal skin. I see a gale closing around me and lifting me into the sky where I am burned by the light and torn by the noise until absolutely nothing remains. Nothing but ash drifting down softly to dust a square of pavement, mingling with the last few drops of water that are wrung from the clouds as the storm heads onwards to find better horizons.