on thunderstorms

Cover by Ren Tang, staff poet and photographer

i.

I watch the rain fall. I know that air

resistance pushes raindrops’ undersides into concavity, 

     know how to calculate 

their kinetic energy given mass and velocity, or potential energy given mass and height; I know,

     I know, 

          I know.

I know everything yet I can’t see 

anything but the faceless lines of water streaking

on the window towards the ground, hear anything

     but the hammer blows falling like a tremolo drumbeat. The roof of the car 

has always sounded like a snare.

ii. 

The Goo Goo Dolls blare through my earbuds. Between Iris and the rain, 

I can almost pretend that the distance between us is measured in 

armrests and arm-lengths

     instead of armor and artillery shells. Another stalemate? Or another Christmas truce

in this war of ours that never ends? 

There, and then gone;

lightning flashes burn like 

     the simmer in my ribs. We learned about this in AP Physics, in electrostatics,

how that forked millisecond rift in the air is really the collision 

of two highly charged regions. Some days, the crackle of your ire stays away from me. Some days, 

     we collide.

Some days, it feels like you only taught me 

          how to loathe. 

iii. 

I watch the rain fall. The voice of the tempest rolls around us, more fearsome a storm than

any typhoon—no earthly thunder lasts as long

          as your anger, no earthly rain as long

          as our cries. My brother’s tears are ghosts, 

dissociated; 

     mine are bandaged in

pain and scars and anger and time. Maybe one day

I’ll learn to wrap them in something softer. Maybe one day

          (on a genie’s lamp)

you’ll learn to be softer instead.

iv. 

I watch the night fall. Outside, the 

     sun sets, old-family-Toyota robin’s-egg sky blue into tangerines-you-cut-for-me orange into 

     the deep purples and dream-speckled never-quite-blacks

of the suburbs. The thunderclouds have faded away their greys, this August outburst spent

          for now—a fury in remission. Tomorrow, you and I

will pretend just like the summer does that this storm never happened, the rain burned off the asphalt and

     out of our mouths and

into the annals of our (my) memories. I will carry on pretending, 

through heat waves and dog days;

     you will carry on forgetting, in the way that makes everything just fine enough, just okay enough—  

until the storm clouds gather 

               again.

Author bio

Ren Tang (they/any) is a college student from Long Island, New York. In addition to writing, they enjoy amateur photography, their partner, amateur photography with their partner, and general chaos. Her collection of interesting words and quotes grows ever longer by the day; he is, above all, a lover of beauty in all its forms.