Static Between Us

I stood at the window, waiting for you.

The evening wore a strange disguise:
the darkness glowed blue,
yet the sun refused to leave the sky.
The world seemed caught
between two stations,
half daylight,
half dream,
its signal crackling at the edges.

Then a single black cloud
drifted from nowhere,
silent as an unanswered question.

"What are you doing here?"
I whispered.

It gave me only static.

More clouds gathered,
layer upon layer,
their whispers rubbing together
like old radio frequencies
that almost formed words
before dissolving into noise.

Without warning,
the streets turned wet,
their pavement shining
as though rain had passed.
Yet not a single drop
had fallen from the sky.

Instead,
a rainbow stretched itself
across the silence,
bright as a promise
that had forgotten
how to keep itself.

Then I saw you.

A taxi rolled slowly around the corner.
Through the window
your hand lifted,
waving to me,
small,
certain,
beautiful.

For one impossible heartbeat
everything became perfectly clear.

Then—

Boom.

Lightning tore open the sky.

It struck the taxi
with the fury of a thousand crossed signals.
The world exploded
into a white fireball,
every outline erased,
every color swallowed
by a blinding burst of electric breath.

My hair rose,
every strand reaching upward
as though trying
to escape the earth.

The sound crashed through me,
not like thunder,
but like a rocket
slamming into the edge of the world,
a roar that shattered
every thought I had.

Static.

Not silence.

Not noise.

Something trapped between them,
buzzing beneath my skin,
filling my lungs,
making my heart
forget its rhythm.

I was terrified.

Frozen.

Unable to breathe,
unable to look away,
certain I had watched
the universe lose its connection.

Yet somewhere beneath
the electric chaos,
beneath the sparks,
the smoke,
the impossible light,

I remembered.

You were inside
the safest place imaginable.

A Faraday cage.

The lightning could dance
around steel and glass,
could scream across metal,
could flood the air
with white noise
and burning light,

but it could not reach you.

So I stood there,
shaking,
while the static slowly faded,
the sky tuned itself again,
and the blue darkness
returned to being
only night.

Sometimes fear
is nothing more
than the interference
between what we see
and what is true—
a storm broadcasting
on every frequency,
until love finally breaks through
clear enough
to be heard.