Through the trees I could see a heavy hue in the sky, scattered slashes of ultramarine between black branches. If the sky could bleed, it would have bled that color, rich and visceral. There was a strange scent on the wind and a crackling energy in the air, more than ozone, more than lightning—like the jolt of electricity pumped through a dead heart in a last-ditch effort to cheat death, a necromantic magic animating the world and my chest and my limbs and suddenly I was running down to the shore and I grabbed her hand—she wanted to go inside but I pulled her with me, she had to see, she had to feel it like I did—and we skidded down to the lake. 

It was quiet except for my ragged breathing and the snarling of the storm. The dock, the shore, the trees at my back and the distant horizon—all were painted the cobalt blue of the sky and the water. The only light came from a hole in the storm: a speck of light, faint but compelling as a distant star. Clouds coiled around it in a slow spiral, twisting ever tighter as I watched, and I wasn’t really on the ground anymore. Everything seemed to sink towards that star: my world was quicksand, reality warping towards a single point, pulling me off my feet, my soul from my body. 

Or. Or. Or. Or maybe I was sunk deep into the shadows of the lake itself. Maybe I saw a glimmer of light, and the light was air, and my lungs were desperate for it. Maybe I was swimming for the surface.

-- cloudburst, 2023

Body of water: Columbia Lake, CT Date: August 8th, 2019 Time: 8:03 PM

And the river and the sunset were a perfect mirror, and though the horizon cast its black shadow long over the land all I could see was a world of infinite color.

-- sundown, 2023

Body of water: Mississippi River Date: September 26th, 2021 Time: 7:26 PM