On a beautiful fall day, the sirens sang of a coming tornado. We were meant to go downstairs and hide in our basement, praying the storm would pass us by. Instead, we ran outside. We marveled at the strange green of the sky, at the awful stillness wrought by the absence of birds. The wind picked up, the rain came down. We ran through the gale on bare feet—the wind to our backs, we were nearly flying down the empty roads. Around us, branches snapped and crashed to the ground, but nothing hit us, nothing could. We were invincible.
Megan Neary is a writer and teacher living in Fort Collins, Colorado. Twitter: @meganneary2 “The Storm” is the Editor’s Pick for our PRAISE RAIN contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.