Lullaby

Literary | Psychological -TWC: 700 ish

As always, mind the content warnings at the end¹

Enjoy

Lullaby

You cannot sleep without thunder. Not anymore. Not after twenty-three years of it.

Your body learned young: the crack that splits the sky means rest is coming. The kind of thunder that finds your house specifically, that knows the exact pitch to rattle your bedroom window in its frame.

You were four when you started sleeping through it. Your parents said you were such a good sleeper. Such an easy child.

The pattern was always the same. Quiet during dinner. The pressure building after, the air getting thick and strange. Then the first crack—sharp enough to make your chest tight—and you’d know. You learned to read them like forecasts: how long by the violence of that first sound, how bad by what came after. Some nights it was quick, brutal, over. Other nights it built and built, the thunder rolling through every wall, the house screaming under the pressure.

The walls shook. The foundation trembled. Sometimes you heard things break—picture frames, the good china, whatever couldn’t hold against the storm. The thunder would crack and crack again, relentless, and the house would take it. The roof, the walls, the frame of everything holding you. The house absorbed every strike.

It always held together. No matter how hard the storm hit.

After came the rain. Two days minimum, sometimes more. Constant, soft, soaking into everything. You’d wake to the sound of it—gentle against the windows, steady on the roof, like the house itself was weeping. Everything grey and waterlogged. The floorboards swollen. Every surface damp.

Your mother moved carefully those mornings. Slow footsteps, quiet voice, like she was trying not to disturb the sodden air. Your father left early for work, his car disappearing into the rain before you came downstairs. You learned to move softly too. To carry yourself like you were made of wet paper, liable to tear.

The storms came in seasons. Sometimes weeks between them. Sometimes every night for a month. You learned to sense them coming—the particular weight in the air, the way sound changed in the house, the silence before the first crack that said: brace yourself.

You got good at it. At sleeping while everything shook. At waking into rain and knowing how to be small and careful. At pretending the storms were normal, that everyone’s house screamed like this, that all roofs leaked for days.

When you left for college, the dorm room felt wrong. Too still. Too quiet.

Your roommate slept like a stone, but you lay awake waiting for the first crack, the familiar violence that meant you could finally rest.

The first real thunderstorm that semester, you finally slept. She complained about the noise in the morning—said it kept her up all night—and you didn’t know how to explain that you’d slept better than you had in weeks.

You moved six times before you admitted what you were looking for. Not ground floor. Not top floor. Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere the sound travels through. Somewhere with thin walls and people living above you. Somewhere that shakes when things get loud.

Your current apartment sits beneath a young couple. The ceiling is thin enough that you hear everything—footsteps, furniture scraping, voices when they rise and rise and rise. You chose it specifically, though you told the landlord you loved the light, the location, the rent.

The weather app stays open on your phone. You check it before bed like a ritual. Tonight: clear skies. The couple upstairs is having a quiet night. Just the soft sound of their television, their careful movements, their reasonable voices.

You lie in the dark and wait, but nothing comes. No crack splitting the air. No thunder, no lightning strikes. No rain after to soak everything soft.

Just silence, careful and terrible.

You don’t know how to sleep like this. You never learned.

Outside, the city is calm. No storms forecast for days. The couple upstairs turns off their lights. Their footsteps fade. Everything goes quiet.

You close your eyes and try to remember what peace is supposed to feel like.

You can’t.

-

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”
— African proverb

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Photos by Jonathan Bowers and by Phil Desforges on Unsplash

© 2025 E.M.V. - writing as Morgan A. Drake. All rights reserved.

1. Content Warning: This story uses weather metaphor to explore childhood trauma, domestic violence, and the ways children adapt to household dysfunction. Readers sensitive to themes of abuse, particularly in family contexts, may wish to proceed with care.