Back to July 4, 1994

Colors bloom in the sky.
I am six years old
and parked in a folding chair
on the neighbor’s lawn.
The hill ahead of me rises
into soft lines against
the black backdrop.

Before the next explosion.
Before I drive past this hill ten years later and go cold.
Before I pilgrim here the next year and sit where it happened.

I am six.
I have never seen the sky
so beautiful
and terrifying.

Before your blood soaked clothes in a paper bag,
when mom showed me the visor of your hat, the splatters there.
This is what happened to Dad. This shirt is green, not brown. That’s the blood.
Before the years of flinching.
It felt like a sledgehammer hit me in the face.
Before I thought of my eyes as popable balloons of fluid
and yours the dice of snakes.

The sky lights up in one final show:
a red beacon back and forth.

My mother runs up the hill,
her chair toppling.
The sky hangs black and silent,
the hill swelling like a wave
that will cap and wash over me,
tumbling my parents
with its muscle
and burying us in its wake.