Lightning

The lightning just struck the ground 2 feet in front of me. It didn’t matter, just another storm. Yet there was something different. The wind was colder even though the weather was getting warmer. The rain was pouring much harder around me than anyone else. How is it that all of these storms approach yet never hurt me at all? Why does is approach me at all then? Possibly I am thinking of it too literally. I hear the car honking constantly. The door opens for me and I walk in. I did not order a taxi, nobody was coming to pick me up. Why did I get in that car? Maybe I should have taken the storm as a warning and walked back home. Yet here I am controlled by the storm in this car I cannot explain. I look towards the driver’s seat and I can’t believe my eyes.

It was you, driving that car. I felt two opposing emotions rising in me. Both comfort and discomfort at the same time. My brain is torn apart between whether I should believe what I see as a reality, or take it as a live warning of what I could be doing wrong. There was nothing certain in my mind about how the night would turn out. Yet I knew that it would not be normal like any other night. You took your eyes off the road and stared right back into my eyes. I could see it, you were scared. What I could not see was why? Why were you scared and not me? Why were you driving me through this storm? Everything told me that this was supposed to be the other way around. Yet it was not. Besides from your eyes, the rest of you showed no signs of fear. I have to say you hide it well.

You turned the volume wheel on the car to the highest it could go. It was your favourite song, but you did not sing along to it loudly. The fear kept you reserved, contained in the box of the moment. So I decided to ask you where we were going. You didn’t say anything except “wait.” Why couldn’t you tell me where we going? As this confusion took the course of my brain, lighting struck just two feet in front of the car. You stopped the car, you turned the music down and the storm cleared out. I looked back at you and you were not there. The car door never opened, but you were gone. Woosh, a cool wind that felt different from the other. All of what I had seen through the night was reduced to atoms. I decided to take a look in the rearview mirror.

At that moment I realised something, I could see you in my eyes. The fear you had all along, was now a part of me. The steering wheel moved into my hands and the rain came back. The music did too and so did the lighting. Yet I sat there in my car waiting for you to return. I knew you would not come back, yet I wanted to trust the unpredictability of the night. I could not differentiate between my fear and my excitement. Eventually, I left the car and went back home, realising that waiting for you was meaningless. Since you never existed outside of my mind in the first place.