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Storms are beautiful from one side of the window.

Slick rivulets slide like mercury down the glass, night skies glow orange and violet through charcoal fog, and trees and telephone wires bend startled how-do-you-dos as the wind whips their backs.

And then there are the sounds.

Drops click-clack-tap like fingernails on a counter, wind exhales raggedly like my grandfather settling into his chair, and cars rush by on washed-out streets, hissing like alley cats running for cover.

You can hear it all with the ear you don’t have pressed into the muffle of pillows, but there is nothing to feel but the woolen weight of blankets and worn sheets smooth against your bare legs.

Drowsy, dreaming, lulled by the drumming on the panes.

Safe.

***

Storms can be beautiful from the other side, too.

But this is a wilder thing.

This is blinking and laughing and shouting through the assault of icy drops and freight-train gusts.

This is looking for familiar shapes in the watercolour-blackness around you.

This is shivering, this is shocking, this is sharp.

But as scared as you might be when lightning cracks overhead, there is no denying that you are alive and awake and in the moment.

Electric.

***

I used to love storms either way.

Until I got stuck in this one.

I feel as though this downpour would rather drown me than bathe me in adrenaline.

I feel the seams of my jacket soaking through from the constancy of the damp.

I feel my face growing red and bitten by the cold and framed by seaweed tendrils of hair clinging in icy streams down my neck.

Then I feel myself going numb.

I can still see the butter-pat windows of warmer places from where I stand and I’m tired of trembling at the thunder above and below and everywhere, but the blackness between my body and shelter seems nearly impossible to navigate.

I thought I could tough it out.

I thought I could turn my hood against the fierceness of it all.

But I think I need someone to open a door and tell me to get the hell out of the rain.

I’m just not sure they know I’m out here.