Creative Nonfiction by Sarah Menkedick

Heat Lightening – Ohio from Sarah Menkedick on Vimeo.

The other night my dad rustled me up from reading The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao to come look at the heat lightening. We plodded up the wooden staircase to the deck, and the sky was being suddenly, erratically illuminated with violet flashes that etched out the clouds and the stark line of the horizon. The sound of crickets thickened the air and we settled into chairs and watched sky, earth, the line between, the Ohio night. There was something there about changes, about endings, about a low and sad continuity beneath our lives that escapes us and is felt only as a rumble in flashes of heat lightening.

Then, later, we ate peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream and went to bed.