“It’s comin’ a storm.”

I followed my daughter’s gaze to the horizon and saw the lightning flash. Clouds dark as God’s armageddon gathered force along the distant mountain range. On cue the wind blew a tumbleweed across the highway in front of my car. Despite the summer heat, I shivered as a goose stepped over my grave.

It’s comin’ a storm.

Something about that phrase sparked my imagination, resonating with images of desperate ghost towns and a finality that comes with accepting what you can’t control. A whole world spun out in my imagination, the possibilities tangled like threads in a broken loom.

“It’s  comin’ a storm?” scoffed my son from the backseat. “You sound like Yoda.”

“My words tripped on their way out of my mouth,” my daughter said with a shrug.

“Better not speak like that in school or they’ll kick you out of Honors English,” he said.

“Whatever. It’s still coming,” she said.

I shook my head and swept up the cobwebs of an unborn story, tucking them into bed in a mental incubator. We were running a marathon of  back-to-school shopping and like Robert Frost said, we had miles to go before we sleep.

It’s comin’ a storm–and a story–but not today.