Lightening Eats The Oxygen

Overall Tone

• Dark, oppressive, and visceral
• The tone is unfiltered and raw, not poetic for beauty’s sake but for truth.
• It carries a sense of internal violence—not rage directed outward, but turmoil turning inward.
• There is no comfort offered, only endurance. Any hope is subtle, fragile, and hard-earned.

Emotional Mood

• Isolation – the speaker is completely alone, emotionally and physically.
• Anxiety and dissociation – shaking, numbness, distorted perception, loss of bodily connection.
• Claustrophobia – the storm presses down rather than surrounds; the sky feels close, heavy, threatening.
• Survival rather than healing – the emotion is not “I’m okay,” but “I’m still here.”

Imagery

• Storm imagery mirrors the mind: thunder = internal noise, lightning = intrusive clarity, heat = panic.
• Dark clouds symbolize overwhelming thoughts that never fully break or release.
• Lightning acts as violent insight—brief moments of seeing everything too clearly.
• The black rainbow is a key symbol:
• It twists a traditional symbol of hope into something honest but bleak.
• Represents survival without joy, beauty without comfort.
• It’s not redemption—it’s continuation.

Pacing & Rhythm

• Slow, heavy pacing with deliberate weight on each image.
• Longer descriptive passages create a sense of being trapped in time.
• Short, blunt lines (“I am alone here.” / “A black rainbow.”) hit like impacts.
• The rhythm mimics shaking—uneven, halting, unstable.

Voice & Perspective

• First-person, intimate, confessional
• The speaker doesn’t explain feelings—they inhabit them.
• There’s no distancing metaphor like “it feels like”—everything is happening now.
• The voice is weary but not defeated; exhausted, but still conscious.

Themes

• Loss of control
• Dissociation and numbness
• Endurance under pressure
• Freedom not as escape, but as release through surviving

What It Is NOT

• Not inspirational
• Not romanticized suffering
• Not resolved

What It Leaves the Reader With

• A lingering heaviness
• Recognition rather than reassurance
• The feeling of standing in silence after thunder—when things are still broken, but quiet enough to breathe