After the Storm

Outside, it is deathly still.

The trees are statues frozen in time and the sky is a blanket of heavy, dark clouds.

The atmosphere is dead but very much alive. The atmosphere has invisible energy, full of life but the clouds are deceivingly lifeless.

The wind slowly picks up, gently tossing and turning the leaves, then violently thrashing and twirling, whipping and whirling them in the air.

In the distance, thunder starts to roll behind the clouds like a drum gradually getting louder until suddenly it explodes, like a loaded cannon in the sky. Other times, it cracks like a tree splitting down the middle that shakes the ground as it falls.

The house shudders and shrinks away, waiting for the next attack as the rain transforms from a soft, slow rhythm into a heavy, hammering beat.

Flashes of lightning illuminate the entire sky like flash bulbs from a million cameras capturing the world in a state of rage.

Howling is the wind, roaring is the thunder, pounding is the rain, blinding is the lightning.

Until suddenly everything stops.

It can last a minute, it can last an hour, but it vanishes within seconds.

Just as quickly as it started, the wind dies down, the rain evaporates, the thunder resonates to nothing and the lightning fades. The clouds begin to part from each other and that dark, heavy blanket disappears to reveal a clear blue sky and a warm yellow sun.

The only pieces of evidence of atmospheric anger are the scattered leaves and the moisture left on the ground and on the windows. Without the leaves, without the raindrops left behind, the storm did not exist.

It is hard to believe that something so violent and unrelenting can arise from such an innocent setting and end with something so beautiful like a rainbow.

It is hard to believe that one minute the wind is shrieking violently, the thunder is exploding loudly, the rain is falling angrily, and the lightning is flashing brilliantly and in the next minute there is absolutely nothing.

What starts with such wrath ends with such peace. What starts so ominously ends so reassuringly. What starts with dark ends with light. What starts with gray ends with color.