Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

Thunderstorms engulfed us
and we turned off our televisions because
the electricity was gonna go out anyway.
We huddled inside the living room,
my nose smashed against the window screen,
and we counted in our own ways in our heads.

The deafening boom, crack, the silence of the thought
of a falling tree,
the metallic cadence I didn’t want to end.

Dad sat in the chair and stared out
the window facing the road, his left hand
propping up his left cheek, his index finger and thumb a backwards L
beside his ear, the rest of his fingers piled up and resting
on his upper lip, which sometimes twitched in a
fragment of a prayer.

Mom kept a close eye on her flowers, kept saying she
hope they don’t die.

I ran out onto the porch, Mom yelling at me to stay inside,
but I didn’t listen and she didn’t follow.
Barefoot. I bounded along the edges of the porch
where the wind blew the rain into the perimeter,
creating dark jagged edges then rounded hills,
water shadows, storm prints,
I’d put my toes in them
and sat on the porch swing watching the whole valley
get baptized. Dips in the porch became warm puddles
under the swing, so that my feet touched the earth,
water, and air with each arc I made. And the air—

the air during a rain like that, there on that porch,
the earthy humidity from the concrete mixing with the crisp wetness
from the sky, all that in my nose,
it made me drunk before I even knew what that meant or felt like.

On the upswing, I prayed to God for lightning to strike right in front of me
but far enough away. Supernatural fireworks made me pump my legs
harder. I wanted to kick the ceiling.
Rainbows never made me feel like that.

On the downward swoop, I wondered if I should go back inside
with Mom and Dad and worry about the protection of flowers
and whatever else, or if I should stay there and pump harder and harder,
imploring the boom, flash, and rainfire to continue. The storm was the only thing
that could make us so quiet.

My soles skidded on the porch with the break in the clouds.
I heard Dad get out of the chair and mutter, “Well, that’s over.”
Mom came outside to check on her flowers.
I lay down on the swing, my head clunked on the white wooden seat slats,
the rattle of the chains reminding me to inhale the last part
of that thunderstorm air.