Lightning

People are like flashes of lightning in a thunderstorm. You can't predict where they'll strike next so loneliness wraps his protective arms around my waist and whispers love stories in my ears. He holds me fast as the whole world around us is set aflame in an uproar of electrical storms. I hear the crying and the dying, the screaming and the teeming, but I hold steady in my kingdom of hushed prowess. My toes spread like tree roots into the ground while my head floats to different constellations and galaxies unknown to human kind. I look down at the Earth, like a sentinel of the universe, and watch the lightning envelop the grassy plains and deep blue oceans of this spherical entity. I watch as every ounce of salt water molecule is zapped and supercharged, spreading their electrical currents from shore to shore. I watch as whole nations try to make this uncontrollable energy feasible into machinery, guns, weapons, violence and wars, as their children lie dying in street corners. It is mankind's prerogative to expand and control, but wise men know that most anything isn't controllable. So loneliness takes my hand and we fly away to outer space. We dance among the stars and we slide down the tail of Scorpio. We make friends with the twins of Gemini, and we ride the back of Leo to the furthest corners of the universe. We ride like Trojan warriors to the promised land through an endless vacuum of space and time. We watch nebulas give birth to stars as their atoms are crushed under immeasurable forces of gravity; atomic fusion is happening all around us and for a second I swear my hands are iridescent. But these roots, these roots will always reach home and before I know it I'm falling backwards. I'm being pulled back to Earth, only to be surrounded by the lightning once again. Loneliness tells me not to be afraid, he tells me he'll live in my mind and that he will be the paradox that will never let me be alone again. And that through him I will always feel complete, and that with him, lightning will never strike me more than once.