Precipitation

He was awoken by the sound of thunder, and then the constant thrashing of water striking his windowpanes at terminal velocity kept him awake. He turned his head towards his side as he reached for his phone which he always kept nearby to tell him the time and then flopped back down on his pillow and sighed. It had been several days since he had slept well, he had always been a light sleeper, but of late there had been something nagging him, something that he couldn't quite put a finger on.

He got up to take stock of the weather outside, stepping out onto his balcony to face the spray of rain bouncing off the parapet. From his vantage point he could see far into the distance and marveled as the lightning raced the rain towards the ground in the distant horizon. Trees were clinging on for dear life as they were thrashed about in the wind and pieces of garbage were being driven down the streets below like tumbleweed in the old Western movies his father loved.

There was not a soul to be seen awake. Mother nature had reclaimed the city, if only for a little while. It made him think of how easy it was for things to regress with the slightest loosening of order. At the whim of a butterfly in China, a thunderstorm could brew in his backyard. And not just nature. People too are not so different from ancestors past. We often talk about empathy and charity and hold ourselves with high ideals and a sense of right, but at the end of it all, when the chips are down, everyone thinks for themselves. An Animal Kingdom veiled only by concrete and steel and complex textiles. We live in a Savage Civilization, at best. Where we mask our hunters instincts with words and fancy cars. And we keep spiraling downwards.

Maybe there is hope somewhere in all this. A shimmer of light off the water covering the world around him whenever plasma united earth and sky for a moment. Silver linings, lights at the end of the tunnel, these are all things we were taught to believe in.

He shrugged to himself as the night wore on, and decided to go back to bed to try and sleep.