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birdmad
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Day before yesterday.
Merciless sun beating down into the fading hours of evening.
Stepping out of the office was like stepping into an oven that had been on pre-heat all day.
wispy, high clouds overhead. charged air.
As i stepped off the bus that drops me off about a hundred feet from my house, over my headphones i heard a loud noise. see my brother and his kids coming out of the gate checking to see if they can see where the sound came from.
113°F the voice in my headphones tells me as i am greeted by the sight of the entire population of my street prairie-dogging out of their yards to see if there isn't a fire burning nearby to account for the acrid burnt smell.
as was the case for us when we were little, having grown up maybe just a tiny notch or two above what we perceived as ghetto - my brothers kids whipped out the kiddie pool and ran the hose, deciding that they would wait out the power loss in the relative comfort of the shallow circle.
listened to the radio and smoked a cigarette while the kids played, rehashed the days events with brother, talked baseball with sister-in-law. ate dinner in the encroaching darkness of my kitchen, astonished at how hot it still was.
looked for a CD to spin in my little player to blare out as far as the backpack with the little speakers that the mermaid sent me for my birthday would play.
phone calls to utility company, delays, befuddled firemen, apparently what fire there was only lasted long enough to be the fireball of the transformer's first explosion.
wait and wonder.
burn.
sitting back in the dark, empty heat, feeling the waves of it radiate through me from the furniture.
being picked apart by the angry photons
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030717
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