It was the kind of afternoon that turns the sky into poetry before the pen ever touches paper. The clouds had gathered above Barueri with theatrical urgency, casting everything below in a grayscale hush. I hadn’t planned to write. That day, I was just watching — from behind the safety of my windowpane — as the storm rolled in like an old soul with a story to tell.

Then, the thunder clapped. Not the usual kind that jars the heart with sound, but the kind that reaches into you and rearranges what you feel. I stepped outside as if pulled by a string of longing I didn’t quite name yet. Hair drenched, skin tingling, I stood beneath the sky, letting the rain soak through me, knowing full well that I wasn’t just standing in a storm — I was inside something sacred.

The lightning struck somewhere in the distance, but its electricity crackled through me like recognition. That’s when it happened. I didn’t summon it or craft it — the poem arrived, fully formed, like it had been waiting in the clouds all along. I could hear it in the rain’s rhythm, feel it in the wind’s caress.

Later, a friend asked, “How did you think to compare love to a thunderstorm?”

I almost laughed, because I hadn’t. It was never a metaphor I engineered; it was a truth I witnessed. I looked out the window and saw love fall from the sky. That’s all. The storm wrote the verses. I just held the pen. ❤️⛈️⚡️

©️Beatriz Esmer