Thunderstorms

This one is sort of...semi-autobiographical. There are images and specific experiences taken from this summer that I've included, but the story itself is fictional (Obviously, since August 22 hasn't happened yet, lol).

Any and all comments appreciated.

Do you get a sense of grief or loss from this piece?
How do you feel about the length? Are there too many vignettes? Do you think some of them should be combined?
Imagery: are there any places where I need to trim it down?
Tone - what do you think? Consistent? Inconsistent? Weird?

Sorry about the length! I seem to be writing a lot of long pieces lately.

"Thunderstorm Physics"

June 21st

This morning I woke up and
wiggled my toes, as usual,
listening to the drumming sound inside my head.
By lunch I was thinking—
Good Lord, where have all the thunderstorms got to?
—normally, I could pluck them out of the air like
apples on strings.

Isaac would have been proud of me.
When cold air and hot air meet…
But no. That's thermodynamics, isn't it?

June 27th

Today Mom shattered
the vase she'd been arranging sunflowers in,
and I watched the glass pieces skitter across the floor
like rain—
it's been so long since it rained
—before I ran to put shoes on and get the vacuum.
The clouds today are wispy,
cotton not yet spun for dresses.

Gases act differently in a vacuum.
All the equations become easy,
yellow and buttery like sunshine.

July 4th

In the mountains for the Fourth.
Wood shavings scatter over my hands
smelling of cedar.
I was making
something, until the wood cracked and splintered
in my hands.
I have a shard of it trapped under my fingernail.
The thunder rumbled like war drums
but there was nothing to put out the fire
when one of the fireworks went all wrong
and I had to go get a bucket.

All systems tend toward a state of equilibrium.
The drought is bound to break sometime.

July 6th

Driving home,
I could see the grisly, thick clouds
sitting low over the peaks.
Lightning crackled in there somewhere like brainwaves but
the stretch of road we drove down was lined with gold fields
yellowing and wallowing in the sun's heat.
I could smell the sickly-sweet grass, the swan-song of
something in its death throes,
like lilies beside a hospital bed.
The storm was a vulture clawing at the mountainsides.

Time moves faster the closer you are to the ground,
and objects moving away from you always
seem to be running.

July 15th

This afternoon I
shredded the pages of the book I was reading
on the floor of my room.
I couldn't even remember the title anymore,
and the order of words lying on the floor
made the way things happened make some kind of sense.
The clouds passed overhead like towers ready for a siege
but did not quiver once.

Really big objects drag space and time along with them.
No wonder each breath feels like an eternity.

August 1st

The August air is an ocean.
Mom's door stays closed most of the time, and I
go for long walks, drowning myself in the pollen and the humidity,
carrying an umbrella in hopes that
a passing cloud might find a reason to stay.
But like a magic charm, the umbrella keeps the rain
from touching our shriveled grass, brown as dried leaves.
The small patch of earth in the backyard where we used to grow tomatoes
stands empty.

An object moves at a constant speed unless acted upon
by something else.
I am waiting for the equal and opposing reaction.

August 22nd

I was sitting on the porch swing today when
Mom came out of her room.
She sat down next to me and held my hand,
like we did when I was little and we waited
for Dad to come home from work.
My lungs shook in my chest and I didn't have to breathe steadily anymore.
The sky broke open like a glass vase shattered against the floor,
and the rain washed the tide of yellow pollen from the porch,
washed the little tomato plot clean.
The thunder
held the sky open for us, for us alone.

And for a moment we betrayed quantum physics and knew
exactly where we were
and how to pick ourselves up and set ourselves going again.