u/avril14th__

Borris Butters had rules for photographing lightning.

Never stand beneath a tree.

Never be the tallest thing in an open field.

Never trust a storm moving east.

And never stay after the rain begins to fall sideways.

He broke the last rule first.

The storm had arrived over the plains shortly after midnight, a black wall swallowing the horizon. Borris parked on the shoulder of an abandoned county road and carried his tripod into the field.

Lightning flickered inside the clouds.

Once.

Twice.

Then the entire landscape turned white.

Borris pressed the shutter.

Thunder followed so violently that he felt it in his teeth.

He smiled.

By morning, he had taken four hundred and twelve photographs.

He printed twenty-three.

He pinned them to the wall of his motel room and sat on the edge of the bed, still wearing his wet clothes.

One by one, he studied them.

Branching veins of white against purple sky.

A bolt splitting an oak tree.

Another striking somewhere beyond a farmhouse.

Another touching the earth so perfectly it seemed less like electricity than a crack in the world.

Borris leaned closer.

“Which one is you?”

His finger moved to the next photograph.

“Which one is you?”

Then the next.

“Which one is you?”