At seven o’ clock on a storm-beaten night,
Seventeen-year-old Jason sat holding the light
Of a landline phone in his trembling hands,
Trying to say what his heart had long planned.
At Grandma’s house in Scotch Plains he stayed,
With cousins who teased him and jokes they had made.
Rain hammered rooftops like drums full of rage—
All day they’d been stuck in that thunder-filled cage.
For weeks he’d been seeing a girl named Kathy,
Soft-spoken, warm, and impossibly classy.
Now breathing in deep, staring out through the storm,
He dialed her number to ask, “Will you be mine… for sure?”
She answered—her voice like a comforting hymn,
The world and his cousins all faded for him.
A surge of courage rose clear in his chest—
Tonight, he would ask, and she’d answer the rest.
But just as his lips shaped the words he’d rehearsed,
A sharp, blinding pain like lightning reversed
Shot through the back of his head like a spear—
Then darkness, then silence, then nothing to hear.
Down in the kitchen, while dinner was made,
Grandma called out through the storm’s roaring shade.
The twins ran ahead, but when Jason stayed still,
They shouted his name—but the room felt a chill.
Grandma rushed in, phone still pressed to his ear,
He looked like he slept, yet he wouldn’t respond.
They shook him and pleaded, their voices in fear—
But Jason had slipped to a place far beyond.
Paramedics arrived; they raced through the rain,
Yet no breath returned; no pulse beat again.
Healthy and young—no wounds, no disease,
He was pronounced dead with unsettling ease.
Doctors were baffled, the answers unclear,
“No medical reason—he simply died here.”
But grief wouldn’t settle on rumors of chance—
His family pushed back, demanded a glance.
A full investigation finally revealed
A ruptured eardrum—the clue long concealed.
Paired with the storm, the autopsy knew:
Lightning struck through the phone line he used.
Electricity traveled the cord like a vein,
Storm-born and ruthless, invisible pain.
It burst through the phone, through his head in a flash—
Life ended mid-sentence, in one brutal crash.
And Kathy, heartbroken, would later confess
She knew he was moments from daring to ask.
And had he asked softly, “Will you be my girlfriend?”
She whispered, “I would have said yes.”