the neighbors set off fireworks last night, lacerated the gentle drape of nighttime silence with collisions of comets and chemicals. the picture of suburbia.

they were beautiful. and beauty is distracting.

will you do me a favor? close your eyes for me, just for a moment.

let the light bleed through your eyelids like watercolor, let it smear your retinas, the grimy, wandering hands of a curious child.

feel the rattle in your ribs that comes with each explosion, how it shakes some long dead animal sleeping inside your lungs back to life.

listen. just under the delightful discord of festivities, there’s a screaming, hundreds of voices blending together in a cacophony of chests and mouths.

it’s a tangled, convulsing thing, and the hurricane of pitches stain your throat black, until your lungs wilt and all you can do is scream along to the desecration of it all.

it lingers in your ears like tinnitus, and suddenly this muted undertone of violence and despair rings louder than the rockets in the sky.

it’s so deafening you wonder how  you managed to muffle it under these shards of color and thunder for so long.

now open your eyes and witness the appalling truth that echoes in the smoky  skeletons of celebration that dirty the sky and dye america’s moon blood red