crash! ambition dreams but it cannot match the webs of lightning unfolding above the power lines. as the daylight leaves the brick and the stone, electricity floods the interior world, peeking out at the interstate through windows. each would tempt me, call me inside, if it weren’t for the scattered appeal of all the others. a wealth of riches, lightbulbs, filaments. two sides in a war of roses, glowing either amber, for comfort, or fluorescent bright, for a night of clear thoughts, textbooks, and venn diagrams. i’m walking. breathing in. the sky, with its misty watercolors spilling out onto the streets. the radio towers in the distance. the birds chirping thunder to one another. a storm has passed, a new storm gathers its forces against us, on a cold day, when the future rises from inside of you like steam. i drown, briefly, in the wind, in possibility. when i return, my thoughts make for better friends. they feel. new, crisp, like bright leaves floating in the gutter. and the sky, so empty and boring the day before, is now complicated with cirrus and nimbostratus. my thoughts reach up, and out of this place. complicated like the heavens.