The coolness in the air

          I've decided that it's a good idea to take a break from writing my midterm essay.

          I've neglected to mention that we had a thunderstorm the other day here. Sunday was unbearably beautiful. The temperature rose to almost fifty degrees. It was sunny, and breezy. The sort of day I live for. Kite weather. And then, in the late afternoon, it started raining. I was sitting in my room next to the open window, and the light came in all silver and blue and grey and cool, and the rain came down in pulses, like a heartbeat, downpouring one moment and trailing off into a mist in the next.
          And a little after that, I noticed a flash in the clouds. I didn't recognize it at first - despite all the unseasonable weather we've had this winter, my mind was still in the "it shouldn't be thunderstorming" mode. Although, it is March, so I guess I can switch back to summer-weather expectations. And then, about ten breaths later, I heard the faint echo of thunder. I smiled into the breeze coming in through the window. I wanted a porch so I could sit out and watch the storm and smell the rain and the electricity and the wet earth and the coolness in the air.
          The silver light deepened to pewter and steel. There were brilliant, purple lightning strikes, and that glorious pause before the thunder rolls, all granite and stairwells and low frequencies that you feel more in your bones than your ears.
          It's thrilling, I guess, quickening the blood and the senses, but more than anything else, my memories of thunderstorms are soft and quiet. They remind me of my childhood, creeping into my parents bedroom, frightened of the thunder, to sleep curled up in the quilt at the end of their bed. I think of the third story widow's watch of my best friend's house, all the windows open, as we lay on the floor of the dark room, watching the lightning play across the ceiling and walls. Even the times when the weather turned bad. I once sat under the basement stairs, while a tornado stalked our town, playing guitar with my friends by flashlight.
          The wind and the strange stillness and the sound and the frenetic energy of thunderstorms creates a calm in me. I go quiet and empty. Thoughts dissipate for a while, and I'm all senses. The internal monologue, for a while, is slowed. For all the violence of thunderstorms, I find them exquisitely, heartbreakingly gentle.