I was alive and looking at my son sleeping peacefully with the innocence of quivering lashes. That ever slight shake of his dream put me back in time to a moment that stretched into timelessness and my sail alone into darkening seas.

The first strike was off to port, disappearing before the corner of my eye could catch it, but its presence remained with a vague twisting thunder. The sky was beginning to hide behind a dense and brooding line of cloud. The line of horizon grew invisible somewhere between a dark grey sea and a light grey of a set of sun that had disappeared without me noticing somewhere West of South.

Water lapped lazily alongside the hull. The hull was passing slowly in the light airs. The sails were moist with a silver glint that gave them a metal feeling, but I could only look for a moment as another crack echoed to starboard, but turning I only saw monotony all around.

A distance away, no telling how far in this gathering darkness, a bolt split into three almost straight stripes somewhere ahead of me. My eyes blinked at its sudden thick flashing. Spots made me blink harder to try and clear my vision so I looked elsewhere and heard its crackling music. I was still blinking the dots out of my vision. More strikes from ahead again but I did not look at them. Darkness was merging fast. I concentrated on the slightly moving tiller and glanced around to look for storm patches or anything visible aside from the light spots and my boat.

I was suddenly conscious that there was no elsewhere as a distant scattering of light strikes broke from the heavens and entered the seas. Their orchestra began tuning drum and brass instruments and I looked to see and hear them gathering momentum and approaching me as if I had magnetic sails. Sulphur lay a ghostly light covering around me. The bouquet of it was faintly touching my nostrils.

I have always been afraid of lightning. As a child my first memory of it was out a window in the comfort of our back porch. Even in that protection of home told me to remember to be aware and stay away. I remember clearly backing up away from the window. The light from it was elegantly monstrous and the sound was mightier than anything I had ever heard up in that small amount of time that I had been alive. Lightning seemed to slash at the sky. That fear remains and I was looking at it surrounding me without the comfort of the walls of our back porch.

The first horizontal strikes ran for miles not wanting to rest with thunders chasing them into the crowd of verticals. The jagged thin lines of the horizontal streaks screeched the twisting of its notes. A net of light was created all round me with lateral, vertical and horizontal bursts, rays, streams, strikes. I was alone in this tiny boat moving by zephyrs and short surges of wavelets. I was almost still, awaiting what came next. I was forcing my thinking to thoughts of anything else but anything else did not come with any clarity. I could think of nothing but this music of light with its wonderful clashings and pitiful moans. They were all penetrating notes never dreamed of nor wanted. No escape were the only words that came to mind. I tried – it will pass. I tried – fate has me in hand.

I tried to get into the dramatic beauty of flashing streaks, of the dazzling jags, of reflecting arches of sea lines but there was no control. Life and death have no controls and I felt that I was surely going to directly toward those philosophical points no matter which direction I turned.

The warmth of my fear ran down my legs inside my trousers onto the socks inside my boots. I could feel the warm urine where I sat helpless in the cockpit. My thoughts caught up with the beating of my heart. I was conscious that my eyes were wider than normal and that there was nobody around to say any of this to. I was alone in the middle of my own world of phosphorescence, sulphuric smoke, black seas and a puddle of piss.

I laughed, then laughed at the silliness of laughing when this situation was still here and should be taken seriously. But why not laugh since I could do nothing about it? I looked about and did not laugh any more even with the why nots bouncing back out of the sky without a rhythm except one of jagged wildness.

In response to my fear stricken reasonings of a be-here-now kind of inappropriate philosophy the lightnings did not stay in the sky. They moved in and also out of what I assumed was the sea shooting upward. My surround was being defined by light in untimed pulses, beams, rays, flashing jags, then blackness. Movements that halted the world, then let it move again.

There was no sense in being afraid of these sporadic, ever-present forms. There was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do about it. I kept telling myself this between and during cringes and strong gnawings of teeth. Time could not count the seconds between the wonders and the trepidation. There was nothing I could do about it.

Spasms of tension with hairs standing in rushes accompanied me as I bravely went into the cabin. The ports were brilliant spotlights that undulated the cabin scenes my eyes recognised. I reached up behind me to the bottle of Barbancourt Three Star Rhum. The label was well lit. I unscrewed the top in jerks to the corresponding near crashes of thunder consciously hiding from the light outside. I lifted the bottle and drank a timeless amount of the liquid. The lightning was now inside me as a tasty substance of caramel lava.

The coals were burning low in the stove so I added some kindling and more coals. Looking into the small flames a warmth filled me, recognising the love I felt for my son; for life itself, my family, my friends, events that had happened since that time of purity.

I hadn’t thought about that night much after it happened. Now, looking through the blur that tears make at a small purity of lash flickers I say out loud, I am happy to be alive.