The Forth of July was always a bright thing, full of activity and family and fireworks. Where I live there are such sights in the sky that people wait all afternoon until darkness finally settles and the show begins.
Red and blue and green and gold and purple and white splash across the sky, firing away from a central point as if being hurled with all the force of a god. Screamers that rip into the sky and our ears like wounded animals and popping cracks that echo like a heavy drum beat across the sky.
Tilting your head back you can watch it all play out, on and on and on.
I did this Saturday, a niece resting against me, and all I could think was
I want to go home and write.
I am consumed, like a fire burning me up from my feet to my chest to my head, like a starved man lapping up at the last slip of sugar on a wrapper, like I am water and writing is a dehydrated frog.
Nothing prevents the attacks of my muse, prodding and pestering whilst I do the most mundane things. Nothing protects me from the tearing of his fingers as I writhe under the burden of words and meanings and relationships that
do not really exist. What can I do?
I must write. I will write.
Nothing matters except to write. Nothing at all.
