Sideways lightning knocks from cloud to cloud, clobbering from behind with a shaky internal glow. A streak at times. A rip across the sky, light from darkness, bright power from threatening grays and greens.
A city night looks green to me, as I wait for a storm to start.
My colorblind eyes conflate dark clouds with the reflected glow of signs and streetlamps and the endless blaring orange 4.399 for regular unleaded at the gas station across the street. When dark clouds roll in at night, my brain scrambles the light and darkness and reflective little particulates and processes it into a green-skied world only I see.
It’s a world only I can see. I never want to be fixed.
But on nights like this, I wait for those jagged shreds of light. I want those electric rips, the rips in the sky I process as the color of bleached coral, to tear the sky apart.
I want wind and water. I want cracking rumbles and the howls of terrified dogs. I want rain and hail and ear-splitting thunder. I want shrieks of wind, cracks of branches, spicy chemical droplets rolling across my lips and that sharp and earthy reek of a whipping spring storm. I don’t want weather to be something I see anymore. I want it to be something I hear, feel, smell, taste — senses I know I’m getting right.
I want lightning the color of coral to split green skies.
The storm’s a dud so far. The lightning and thunder I crave roll along to the south. I see buses, joggers, a car pulling in across the street to buy gas at 4.399. Wind pushes a green cloud on, revealing inky black starless skies behind. I see these things, not hear-touch-taste.
The night is calm. I watch the world and feel disappointed.
I really don’t like that gas station
Editor’s note: It started coming down like a sumbitch like 20 minutes after I wrote this.
