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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