Poem of the Week | She Was Lightning by Aisling Twomey
She Was Lightning
by Aisling Twomey
It was years before I learned
that the lightning comes
before the thunder. First
a charge, a flash, a strike that
splits the sky,
demanding attention.
The thunder follows;
a mournful growl
after the char.
As teenagers, I survived boys
and books and tests;
she survived the slow
dripping poison of the
chemotherapy.
She raged against the machines
that healed and hurt her,
determined to triumph
against bad odds
with an unlucky hand.
Now, when lightning forks
across the night,
I stop and gaze skyward to assess
the heavens.
When the thunder groans and
the sky aches with
the hulking heft of the storm,
my heart cries with the rain.
By 25, it was clear she
couldn’t outlast it.
Late on a March evening
in a cramped hospital room I
learned the pain of goodbye.
The lightning too is
short-lived; a flagrant, blatant, fracturing
clash of commotion, a rushing
upheaval in the vault, a
colossal blaze across the world, then
gone.
Only the thunder remains;
a reminder
of what has gone before.
And you would never doubt
the power of the storm.
After the bursting flash,
when the bruising thunder
rumbles overhead and
passes on to fray another’s nerves,
you know you have borne witness
to the sublime
magnificence of a
powerhouse.
She was lightning.
HeadStuff is now open for poetry submissions for our spring Poem of the Week series. We are extending this deadline to the end of April. Check our submissions page for guidelines.
Cover photo by Juvar Abrera on Unsplash