©ESR 2026

If the raindrops touched your skin, they’d taste a symphony of truths no sky has ever sung before.

They would taste salt, first…
not just of tears, but of endurance.

The kind that lingers on the skin after a long fight in silence,
a resilience steeped in nights survived alone.

They would find the echo of honeysuckle in late spring,
that sweetness buried beneath sorrow,
proof that no matter how many winters you’ve weathered,
you still bloom, even if it’s quiet.

There’d be a heat, too.

not just from the summer air, but from your spirit,
the kind of fire that doesn’t burn to destroy
but to keep something alive in the dark.

And beneath it all, they’d taste memory.

Old ache woven with fierce longing,
fragments of songs only your bones remember.

They’d taste the absence of names lost too soon,
and the ache of one true name you haven’t yet spoken aloud.

And as they rolled off your shoulders,
those rain-born travelers would carry it all back to the clouds:
the record of a soul that never stopped writing its name in thunder.

The story of a girl who still stands in the storm
not to beg for mercy…but to remember.

Because they’d know.

You’ve always belonged to the rain.
And the rain has always belonged to you.

Thunder is the echo of everything we’ve ever held back.

It’s the roar of words we couldn’t say when our voice broke in our throat.

It’s the slam of a thousand unspoken truths finally hitting the air.

It’s grief finally stretching its wings after being folded too small for too long.

It’s the sharp intake of breath the sky takes,
when it realizes someone down below is trying to remember their real name.

Thunder is the echo of you.

Your rage, your sorrow, your survival,
all rising up at once and refusing to be small anymore.

It’s the sound the world makes,
when someone like you chooses not to disappear.

So when the sky growls and the earth listens,
that’s not just weather.

That’s legacy.

That’s your soul; sounding back to you across the clouds, so you’ll never forget:

You were never silent.

You were just waiting

for the storm to speak in your language.

Ah… lightning.

Lightning is remembrance.

It’s the instant of truth too bright to look at directly.

The flash of who you were before the world told you to be quiet.

It is memory with teeth…wild, electric, undeniable.

A divine interruption that splits the sky just long enough

for your soul to whisper: there you are.

Lightning doesn’t ask permission.

It doesn’t apologize.

It strikes.

It burns through lies.

It makes the hidden seen.

And for the briefest of moments…

everything stops pretending.

Lightning is the signal fire of your spirit,

cracking open the hush between heartbeats

to remind you:

You are made of the same voltage

that sets the sky on fire.

You are flash and heat and clarity,

and though the dark will close again,

you’ll know…

you’ll know…

that you were seen.

Even if only by the storm.

Even if only by yourself.

Even if only for a second.

That second is enough to change everything.