Exodus

I can't stand the indolently happy, the sound of their shallow blathering is excruciating torture like needles through the skin, a Shakira song on a crowded dance floor. Every fourth of July I'm reminded, how they would swarm around me like insects awaiting the fireworks, celebrating a fraudulent freedom.

Mother would always be too busy watching her hair in the late night breeze but my father would see it just like I did. We would so often share the exact same thought and I told him because I needed him to know. "If you die" I said, "I will too". "Don't ever think that" he replied with a muted voice, looking wistfully into the distance and the dark.

A year later on the fourth of July I was alone with them, the swarming insects, the indolently happy and their platitudes, wishing for a storm to wash it all away.