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Saturday, October 21, 2017

orange of

Perhaps the eerie, glowing orange of today's midday sun summons the midnight panic of hands reaching for family pets, photographs, passwords and passports with only minutes to spare. We have no desire to eat or speak as long as the soot of last night's hungry, weary witching hour infuses this peachy air – an air charged with particles too dangerous to breathe in yet impossible to flee – microscopic motes of heartbreak clinging to our cars, mailboxes, and entering our bloodstreams, scattering like loose petals in a fluttering avalanche of whirl and whim.

Maybe the grey that remains of what is lost kneels before each family. Twists of molten glass, shards of chipped and blackened plates, a child’s toy somehow untouched, a scorched coffee cup. Meanwhile this dusty citrus sheen of sunlight continues to illuminate the black skeletons of trees and florescent orange cones marking evacuated neighborhoods, the pumpkin-orange vests of volunteers combing the debris for human remains, a color so bright no one can bear to look at it for long.
  

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