Troubled Sky

The sky threatens and roils, yet I am at my calmest. The storm moves in like the slow burn of grief settling in, yet I am rarely happier than now.

It is the moment the airy blue slides irrevocably into miserable gray-black. The moment lightning flickers at the edge of consciousness and horizon, in a color not white or blue or yellow or pink, slightly beyond what I can describe.

For a rare moment, I put down my book, push debts and repairs out of my head, and just watch and listen. Birds having taken shelter, it is just the drone of a window unit, the blurble of the pool filter (finally on) and a rumble in the sky like a premonition.

If I could, I would freeze all this. Live in these moments, this loop of time as clouds coalesce, then part while thunder still thrills from far away and the lightning still entices, and before the rain chases us inside. I would sit here in this very spot, never as happy as when the sky is at its most troubled.