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Storm
by Michael Kilpatrick
The vast plain and the neighborhood looks like Hiroshima when I emerged. It was early and empty and where did the stuff of life go I wonder as the sun peeks over the horizon.
Above the horizon the sky is torn as if it could not decide what to do with the wasted earth; what to do in its gray and black clouds and blue swaths allowing the sun to shine.
Hours ago, even though I did not see it it, the sky had been decisive. It had raised hell against mother earth even as it is an intricate part. It had been furious. It had come down to the ground. This chaotic hell raising come together like some horde sweeping across Russian Steppes. Come down like Sherman seeking the sea.
In late evening it began moist, warm, humid, pleasant. Winds played up from the northwest. Television broadcasting ominous messages speaking of pressures high and low with the barometer dropping precipitously.
Thunderstorms are forecast, tornadic activity is expected as night swallows the sun.
Standing on the porch I watch darkness darker and know clouds are ambushing the sky.
Storm
Still I stand. From inside the house I hear the weather channel is deep into detailing the gathering.
Closer it came. The sky showing electric long yellowish streaks splitting purple black. Lightning living for moments. Thunder louder, nearer, marching and I think of it as an enemy approaching to capture as I stand alone before my abode as my family had recently abandoned me.
Stormy. I wonder if they are beneath howling skies. I remember our voices growing angry as thunder claps shake the ground. Voices mad, screaming, and a taste of violence in the mix.
A gust of wind blows snatching me back to the present and I am moved as if I am not solid flesh. The gnashing currents of air sweeping through me like it would an empty vessel. Sweeping through my empty, echoing, house.
It seemed to say you are nothing before my elements without your wife and children who had been under our own umbrella of storm. Not one thing under a sudden deluge of rain striking with shards as if they are rubber bullets that do not penetrate my thin membrane of flesh.
And then the whole of me seeks underground shelter. This lone human hiding from black wrath, from bombastic noise so much like too many trains riding through rails on flat open fields as I stand looking at the doors above me threatening to burst wide. I shiver to the core of my soul. I feel lost, doomed.
But after a while the rage dissipates leaving a whole body that is empty where morning has broken and I feel the vast Hiroshima plain drowning me.
