The sky lit up tonight with a fleeting glance
At Heaven herself, split open, the cracks of light spilling out for all on Earth to see
On a drive home down the I-5, you see it through your windshield
Purple, then white-gold outlines, instantly gone
A vision of what all could be if you believed only your eyes
Then it flashes again! Five minutes later
Another lovely peek, but never enough to stay
It’s weird because it hasn’t yet stormed, and you wouldn’t even know anything was brewing
Save for those few minutes showing up the rest of the world
What a sight
You wait and see if there’s more
But other than those lights, so quick you can’t even take a picture
No thunder claps
No water drops
You can’t even say if you hallucinated it all
****
Sometimes I feel like that lightning
In a rainless sky
And without rain, lightning has no business being above us
It poses a threat, but only one gleaned cognitively through the sights
There’s no accompanying boom to shake our ears, no accompanying wetness to pelt our face
Lightning in a rainless sky is simply something to look at, observe the potentiation
But never real enough to touch as a threat
As something to be feared or loved, either
It’s off impacting someone else, somewhere else, we don’t have a responsibility to feel it
And often I feel I am that light in passing
The privilege of being pretty
The privilege of invoking wonder in others
But nothing if it doesn’t make a sound that splits the sky open
That makes people stop and marvel
****
Often I am as quiet as those flashes of lightning in a rainless sky
And people assume I don’t have any thunder behind me because I choose to honor space
Giving you all something to value from miles away
But you can’t touch me, hear me, smell me
You can only see me… see a part of me
****
And right now, unfortunately, I am not a force like you’ve said
I am not an inspiration
I am lightning, detachedly observed via my blog
Never heard, or seen, or felt
I want to be your thunder, shaking you so hard you scream from feeling me resonate through your entire body —
****
I run outside onto my balcony, and I furiously am shaking
That I don’t get to be more real than lightning in a rainless sky
But not tonight
Even if it doesn’t rain, I will be fury anyway
Hear me roar, I shout
Except I don’t shout. I can’t raise my voice, for I wasn’t taught to
I was taught to be silent, like lightning, as it goes a majestic way visually
Just as I do when I unleash my keyboard and I type out everything I’ve ever wanted to scream, thundering all of my feelings I want to be honored
I whisper into the void, I am here, so hear me roar
****
And if I can’t jolt you
Can I nourish you
Like water does for the plants?
Please
****
And as if it heard me
Suddenly I am shocked that the sky
Opens up and lets down a single tear
Followed by another
And another
And another
Like a promise from the universe
That lightning is never in a rainless sky
****
I am up north
And you are down south
And sometimes I wonder if you see the same lightning
Or if this sky is different
And I feel my heart clench that maybe if you will it so, it will always be rainless
