It had been
overcast for days, sprinkling but never delivering that full
wallop of a storm, until today. I could tell even before the day started, even though I woke up late this morning and the day had started without me. You couldn't see the sun much. But when I was out in the
parking lot, looking over what cars I was to deliver today, I could smell it. But the clouds had not said much yet. When I turned around to walk back inside, however, it struck me. Mountains of
dark blue and gray waves loomed above me. I imagined that this was what a boat would see if it were magically
flipped up into the air and was finding itself looking
down at the water. This is what it would see before it fell on its face, before its human cargo was drowned by a swift
introduction back to the ocean in a way they hadn't expected. No one ever really expects to see something
so beautiful and
electric, just hanging there in the sky.
The clouds didn't roll, they glided, like plates of air made into substance. They didn't bump into one another like they teach you in school about thunder. They slid across one another like my own hands find themselves tracing over my face as I sit, thinking. They had all the room in the world to make for one another, all that world up there that I often would ignore, take for granted.
When the rain finally did come, it was almost an insult to the sky. It blotted out these bodies I could have stared at for hours like fine art in cold galleries as it hangs, pinned to a wall, so close you could touch them if you were allowed. I darted out to jump start a car and stood out beside it with my face pressed into all those mountains, letting the rain find its way into my creaking skin. I knew I could have been kissed by lightning at any moment, and I almost wanted it to, even if it killed me right there. I would have done anything in that second to be touched by those mountains. To be made into air and blown away.