5:00 p.m. // 2017
I'm combing my hair, humming under my breath to the shuffle playlist that's been playing on my phone. My nails are freshly glossy, my face is painted, jewelry fastened on my throat and wrists and ears, and my clothes sparkle dully in the flickering bathroom light. Outside, the sky is gray and full of clouds, and there's a charcoal overcast on the ground below. I don't pay attention to it. Instead, I apply perfume, spraying some in the direction of the door when it opens, revealing the boy I once loved. He demands to know if I'll be ready any time that day, and I immaturely throw my heels at him.
6:00 p.m. // 2017
As we drive to the party, an overwhelming contentment settles over me like a warm ray of sunshine. The boy I once loved has my fingers in his lap, and we're sharing earbuds. His music is different from mine, but I am so blindly in love that I don't care. I lean contentedly against the glass window of the car and look up again at the sky. It is gray and sick with thunder, and I spot a flash of lightning emerging from the atmosphere like spindly fingers.
8:00 p.m. // 2017
My friends and I are sitting at a table with a white, embroidered tablecloth. There are ornate glasses of wine in front of us, and the people here are wearing silk and gold and rubies that glitter under the yellow lights. Though I am dressed like a princess, I sit at a table and wish I was somewhere else. The boy I once loved runs his lips over my knuckles, as if calming the hungry desire for open doors and green grass that sits in me like a ravenous lion. For now. I reach forward slightly, and taste the wine, sneaking a glance at the gold windows to my right. For a moment, I study the sky, and a small smile graces my face as I watch the first raindrop shatter on the ground. The thunder claps overhead, as if signaling the beginning of a dance. I sit back, satisfied. Though I am confined here in this place made of gold and glass, the rain has broken free.
10:00 p.m. // 2017
We have escaped the party, throwing open the doors and sprinting down the path. The air is like ice, waspish and bitter, stinging my bare arms and neck. I pull my thin jacket closer around me, stumbling down the pavement in heels that are far too big for me. I slip on some fresh ice and the boy I once loved grabs my shoulders to steady me. The rain thunders down on top of us, like an angry parent demanding obedience or submission, but we don't care. We sprint farther from the pristine building with perfect table clothes and towards the city in the distance with burnt out lights but real, harsh life. We are the storm. We are the lightning, striking the ground with every forward moving step, young queens and kings, young gods and goddesses, only hungry for the rain and a sense of adventure. We are dripping with heady adrenaline, full of youth and wine we weren't allowed to drink, we are running down this moonlit river, soaking wet, going nowhere but with a clear destination in mind. We have feet. And in a way, we have drunken, wilted, wings. If the rain falls hard enough, if I run fast enough, then I can almost fly.
We are just a couple of boys and a couple of girls, but in that moment, that rainy night, we were gods and goddesses and sometimes I can still feel the lightning hidden underneath my fingernails.
11 p.m. // today
I sit at my desk, staring blankly out my tiny bedroom window. The sky is dry, and a thin, plastic black. Not a cloud in sight.
