Too Like the Lightning

by Travis Beaudoin

When the rain came, I’d sit on the back porch of my borrowed home and watch the world have a tantrum. It was the only time I didn’t feel alone.

when we look at the stars, we think we’re looking at the universe. Really, though, we are the universe, looking at itself.

He’d forgotten I was there, or didn’t understand how avidly I observed him, or didn’t care. It made me smile and, while it didn’t erase the lust I felt, it did complicate it, making it rich and nuanced. I wanted to hear what he heard. I wanted him to sing for me.

I could have told myself I was too old to dance in the rain. I could have stood on the porch and merely watched him, delighting in his uncomplicated love of the storm. I could have been stone.

I just like that phrase? Too like the lightning, that doth cease to be ere one can say, ‘It lightens!’ I think a lot of life is like that. Not literally as quick as a lightning flash, but things go by before we can appreciate them.

In that moment, with a curtain of rain shielding us from the world, and with him presenting himself to me, he was a galaxy of sunrises.

I don’t know when it happened, the precise moment when lust and affection and the need for his company had become something more momentous. I only knew that I loved him,

He made me laugh. He kissed me like I was gorgeous. These actions were streaks of lightning. They could be marveled at, but not owned.