Anatomy of a Sunset

My feet had already hit the floor by the time I came to, my toes tipping into the moisture that had pooled in from the open french doors. I grabbed my blanket, throwing it over my shoulders and wrapping it tight before I remembered I had been shivering, the fan still humming away. Lightning. The entire house had shaken - where were the others? Lyra would wake up soon enough, not used to the thunder, not accustomed to the room filled for an instant with brilliant white light nor the rumbling that would follow. She didn't know that you can count the distance of the lightning by the seconds it took for the thunder to come. In a few minutes, she would be afraid.

In this moment, I am only still shivering from the cold.

You can feel a thunderstorm before it begins, how the pressure builds until you feel damp and tight with humidity. I had woken up only an hour before, having intended to watch a movie but awakening with the remote still in my hand, the television airing a nondescript show on a nondescript channel. Two-thirty in the morning. Stiff. It was still hot then.

Now I'm awake again, not remembering the thunder but knowing it had left me here with wet feet. Chris will come upstairs, ask if I want the doors closed, and I will project everything upon that moment, that moment that I do not want the doors closed. I do not want the doors closed.

Ginger will lay panting upon my bed, her short-legged heart racing to a finish line I hope it will not cross. No one likes the loud noises but me - not Lyra, not the dog, maybe not even Chris who came upstairs. And I think only that it's too soon while I listen to the drumroll of the rain, that it isn't my birthday.

That this present isn't for me.