The most poetic thunderstorm I’ve ever seen was a midnight one over the old salt flats. The sky was a deep indigo, and the clouds rolled like wet wool, each pulse of light a cracked piano string. Lightning sliced across the horizon in a jagged rhythm, and the rain fell in silver sheets that seemed to hum a lullaby to the earth. I felt the pressure building like a heart about to explode, then release, and every crack was a whispered secret from the sky. It made me want to write it down on a torn page of my journal, even though I still refuse to put it on a screen.

It’s more a quiet whisper, like the pulse of a deep sea drum that you can feel in your bones, but I sometimes catch a thump in my chest when the thunder cracks—just a reminder that the sky is breathing beside me. The rain taps out its own lullaby, and I try to catch that rhythm in my notebook before it evaporates.

A treasure chest it is, but I keep it in the hollow of my arm, like a cracked umbrella that still holds a storm inside. The wind knows where it is, and I listen to the whispers of thunder that stay there when the world goes quiet.