We were standing where we should have been sitting, relaxed by the stars which sprinkled the sky, like stray hairs that a kitten left in his wake. They were bright tears dripping down the darkness for some, asterisks highlighting a page for others. Less abstract thoughts were how the stars were like lights in a small city at four am, some still pushing on through the blinds against the night, some dim coming from the next room where the curtains had been drawn and, few stragglers were bright and multifaceted strangling the effigies of dark matter which fought a bleak battle rising over the shore, carried by the moon reflected tide.
Youth and pride went along like the colors of a flag, sticking together in spite of their differences. I was at the top of the bleachers in Citizen's Bank Park, rising above the heads of many, so close to the fireworks I could smell the sparks igniting, could listen to the ascending hoot of the crack of light as it sped into the stars finding a place among their midst, named by specters according to it's shape and color. I felt the anticipation of the firework, knowing it would blast off as the center of attention at any moment, to flourish like the clouds and taste destiny. Years had not truly passed since I stood here fascinated. While everyone sat in pure joy of being amongst the crowd, I was in awe of being amongst the stars. In the intermission, I pretended we knew each other intimately. I blushed when they winked at me, calling my name. The only thing missing was a hand to hold as I gazed upward, bending my neck in ways I wasn't aware it could bend. He was late, though I thought nothing of it, I knew the traffic would be horrendous. Imagining him honking to the yellow row of taxis lined infinitely and going no where, like a field of daisies only flailing gently in the breeze. I shoveled ice into a plastic cup and poured a Pepsi. I drank it like it was air that I breathed.
Last Fourth of July fizzled with the carbonation into me, filling my brain with sounds of fireworks, not visions but sounds. On our anniversary we sat in Ben Franklin Park sipping champagne when car alarms and fireworks filled our ears simultaneously. The trees where we were nestled beneath skyrocketed over our heads and we had not realized that those trees happened to have grown directly into our perception of the firework display. Golds encompassed reds swallowed blues gorging on silver flames like dragons' tongues licking through the branches to mock our misfortunate position on Earth that night. Jamey grunted as I lit a cigar stick with a white lighter, he flung it from my fingers instantaneously setting off a chain of reactions, plastic smashing against the pavement, a scream of incomprehension from my lips, and a hollow dog like mutter from his own. He had resorted to taking his anger out on my white lighter for a stifled evening with dead romance lurking. His claim was that it was bad luck to carry a white lighter. This might have been the reason we had been in this predicament in the first place he added brutally.
I laughed to myself as the memory faded with the "ooh"s and "ahh"s of the crowd. There was not a bad spot in the stadium to be without a grand view of the game in the sky. I lit a cigarette with my white lighter and turned to Lane, wishing ever harder that Jamey was in the parking lot, making his long trod across the pavement, to reach my arms.
Suddenly three things occurred that sent angelic cheers to mayhem. The fireworks all beamed white, florescent streaming like they were to set fire when they landed, and we were in arms hold under the looming contrasting sky shedding rivers of sparks, stealing all shadows from our faces as we stood, where we should have been sitting on our freedom day in peace. It reached with a stronghold to the sky taking bites out of the stars as the fireworks soared on eagle wings higher and higher.
If they weren't so immediate to our danger, we might not have noticed them. Two rocks, identical twins, could have broke from each other in our atmosphere while free falling, they drew our eyes to full attention as they crashed some mile from our place. Debris, including metal, wire, and concrete flew so far with an intensity that we had to drop our stomachs to the railing to avoid fatal collision. All that my mind could have time to wrap itself around was the vague image of Jamey, smiling dumbly with a ring in his hand. Tonight would be three years since we met, and he was somewhere closer then I to the mysterious rocks which cratered the land in which it crashed. Men were running, women were crying for their men, children were screaming for their mothers, and animals fled rapidly camouflaging themselves into the background as if they could hide from death itself. It would find them, just like it found my lover by now...
The last in the chain of events came from the east. It came from the condensed life packed like cigarettes into buildings breathing a polluted air, a recycled air, but it was shared, the same way they all shared an end. Smoke plumes swelled and expanded as they climbed five miles into the sky passing the clouds easily. I watched small rubble drop from above and realized in disgust that they were birds. This cloud filled with gray shadows and ashen mist fell, it was what the whole population feared. When the inevitable moment came trepidation gripped my heart so determinedly that I couldn't breath. It fell like a tidal wave engrossing all of the city but not with water, but a radiation substance that was sure as water. There was no reason to run, we were goners from the moment we viewed the fluorescent fireworks exploding the sky.
I thought of my boyfriend, thought I wanted to hold him, dead or alive for my last breaths on this forsaken planet. I knew there would be no more baseball, fireworks, hot dogs, lectures, wars, politicians, movies, pets to own, doctor's visits or even cancer. This was the end. Ripples were blue like electric currents flooding outwardly as the circumference of death bloomed. All that it touched was exterminated, the grass waved frigidly, then turned an ugly gray brown. All but the glowing center looked like a black and white film, bodies crumpled then combusted as the radiation spread against humanity like butter on toast. Then I couldn't see to see, the aftermath.
A contest entry
- Short Stories... by MotherMachineGunn.
515 points, ended September 21, 2007, 14 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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When fate gives you fusion, go out like a gentle firecracker,and by the way, 'aftermath', I had English. Nice write Nutter-Butter, real nice.
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Thank you I'm glad you like this piece because this is what I just wrote for my English essay she said, 500 words do you think this cut it? LOL
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cut it just fine, like a ginsu knife through a tomato
Gander
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good goddamn, the things that
you come up with... the brilliant thinkings of your mind... I like the way this reads, the feeling kind of going along with the flow of the story... rushed in some places, kind of giving pause in others... I once heard that white lighters were bad luck... never knew it was such a widespread conspiracy...
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