Thunder
Selina Jean Hisir
The thunder shook her out of sleep. The lightening striking her windowsill kept her from nodding back into the softness of her pillow. She inched her hand over to her left, expecting to find an obstruction close to her, but there was none. Max wasn’t in bed it seemed. The fight they had the week before came back to her then, the promise of regret and a looming presence of pain and anger. They hadn’t spoken since. All phone calls had been missed or ignored, and the pictures that they had shared on their respective social media accounts had been archived or otherwise taken out of view. Relationship statuses remained, for now.
There was still the expectation of a warm embrace when she was awakened by the one thing she would allow herself to fear, the crashing and flashing of the sky full of rage. Max had always joked that at least they would be safe from Zeus, seeing as her disdain for his domain would surely impede his sexual advances.
In that moment, she considered calling. Again. It seemed everything that reminded her of their warmth had made her want to pick up the phone and hear their voice. But she stopped herself. Again. The hurt left over from that night held her, embraced her instead. Her arms couldn’t seem to move in the direction of her phone that sat on the bed side table. The same table that used to have the one good picture they had together, the one that got thrown against the wall after Max had slammed the door behind them. She hadn’t wanted them to have the last word. Now, the picture was hidden between the pages of a book she hadn’t read, the frame in a drawer under the sink, and the glass had been swept up so that her anger couldn’t draw any more blood.
The idea of staying in bed while the sky continued to break seemed futile. She wrapped the covers around her shoulders and turned on the lights as she went towards the kitchen. For a few minutes, the boiling water was the loudest thing in the world, but then the thunder struck again, and she had to remind herself to breathe. She turned off the burner just before the kettle started to sing, and felt the water warm up the cup as she poured.
The colour of the water slowly turned a burnt orange and the caffeine it promised didn’t faze her as it would have, had this been any other night where she thought the chance of sleep remained inches away from her pillowcase. This time, the thunder and the cold half of the bed would keep her awake until the storm passed, or the sun shone through the gaps in her curtains.
She turned on a slow romantic song full of strings and slow melodies as a means to distract herself from the storm. It was loud enough to give her something to focus on, but not enough to wake her sleeping neighbors on the other side of her paper-thin walls. It soothed her, but reminded her of the nights like this one where she could just shimmy her way under the arm of her partner, finding comfort in their warmth, their smell, their slow and steady breathing. It had been a while since she had to find comfort inside herself and by herself, and it felt colder than anything had in a while. She knew this would pass, as all things did, but still, she couldn’t find the same solace in coaxing herself to calmness as finding it in someone else’s chest.
The tea took its time warming her. It touched her fingers, then blew a breath of steamy heat on her face, then touched her lips, finally making its way down her throat, chest, stomach. Sending waves of warmth throughout her body with each sip.
The thunder didn’t cease and echoed the words of anger that had been living in her apartment for days. The tea, unfortunately, didn’t have the power to cleanse the air and instead only drew her attention to the mug she had unwittingly chosen for herself tonight. The same mug that Max would carefully select for their morning coffee, their only cup of coffee, each day. This favoured mug with the stained crack through the inside that never turned any lighter despite the washes and detergent it endured almost daily.
Time passed slower than usual possibly due to the soft sounds of the music or the dim light coming from the single lamp that she had switched on. Maybe it wasn’t really passing at all. The cooling tea was the only reminder that the physical outranks the emotional more times than not. She couldn’t help but remember the words that scratched at her heart on a daily basis, and the words she had thrown in the hopes of a similar effect on the receiving end. She regretted all of it. She remembered the soft smiles and bright eyes she had grown used to seeing full of sweet affection, even on the days it wasn’t quite love, and regretted every word that was said. She wanted to apologize, but didn’t know how. Wasn’t sure if it would result in anything or if they would be empty promises laid out in the hopes of retaining what was already lost.
Eventually, her cup was emptied and washed, put on the rack to dry for another day. The music was switched off, once again making the world silent. And the thunder calmed, and the storm passed, leaving the streets gleaming and the leaves lining her street bright green. The outside air was cleansed, but inside remained stuffy and heavy. An open window let in the freshly cooled breeze and the smell of mist and a new day.
Her phone remained untouched. No new notifications and no new call in her history. How long it would remain like this was unclear. All storms pass, but not all are nourishing.
*
Selina Jean Hisir is a recent graduate of Comparative Literature from Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey. She is currently a fiction and non-fiction editor at Bosphorus Review of Books. Following a move from Canada to Turkey as a child, she grew passionate for books and literature of all kinds, and hopes to follow a life in the publishing world. In her spare time, she reads, writes, and binge watches Netflix. You can find her questionable book reviews and related rants on Instagram at chaos.hermit.