Ominous Clouds - Broadcast

For a long time I enjoyed storms. The region we inhabited was prone to particularly violent, unclassifiable weather, which was never announced on the weather report. These ferocious, convulsive gales, lightning and oppressive humidity, these gleefully painted Victorian landscapes of hell, were called, in the weather reports, ‘rain showers.’ I soon began to associate storms with mendacious weathermen. I stopped imbuing them with any mystery or power and instead suddenly and urgently craved sunlight. At first I obsessed over the white, overexposed light of the desert, an inhospitable world I might not survive, which was better than suffocating in the controlled temperatures of my single-story home. Later I became fixated on the wet, choking heat to which I was more accustomed, whose harshness assaulted whoever drew breath as if it were a poisonous gas rather than fresh air. One night, as the ‘rain storms’ shook our house, I dreamt that every field and hill was moved out of its place and dislodged like a continent with each note of thunder; the town shifted into the woods, unplaceable as a false memory.