The blue has ceased to exist. I can feel my forehead wrinkle against the glass of the window in the upstairs bonus room, trying to get a clear look at how far the gray has conquered. The sky is a sickeningly yellow gray; uneven, patchy, and full of San Diego snow. It floats like petals onto the cars, the streets, lightly covering the suitcases and boxes my neighbors are dragging to their cars. I wonder what the ashes used to be- books, photographs, paper dolls, report cards. The McDonalds across the way begins to cough, and I remember the sting I felt in my throat this morning before we closed up the windows- the ash is engulfing, making my mother’s chocolate hair smell like cigarettes and making my father’s eyes water and become rimmed in red. The burning red sun tries to peek through the clouds of smoke but only casts a dim orange spotlight on the rest of our county, making it look like a constant sundown, balancing between the night and day. I want to make the houses rise from the ashes of their foundations like glorious phoenixes. I want to fill the air with the cheers of the spectators at the canceled football games- in hopes of ending the silence that is only broken by the sirens of hurried fire trucks. The sickening sky would break open at my will and the ash would disappear from the pools at the YMCA so the children will return without the hospital masks and we can hear them laugh again.
| <-"The Ides of March," by Jeremy Jewell |
