Woke up at 7 to the loudest electrical storm I’ve ever heard at this apartment. Explosive. The blinds are drawn but still the whole room pulses with blue light. Sounds like some furious cosmic thing is punching the earth outside my window. More of a boom than a crack. Car alarms going off all up and down the street.

            One of my colleagues is married to a mortician and earlier this week she told him she was embalming somebody who’d been killed by lightning.

            I said, “I’ve always thought that would be a particularly awful mess afterward.”

            He nodded. “She usually doesn’t mention it unless it’s a particularly awful mess.”