July 4th: Little Bombs Slay Silence

We go as far as the fence, and that’s it. I prefer a ride in the car, thank you very much.

Give me a cushion of snow. Give me air so cold my breath turns to droplets of ice. Give me low clouds gray, even black, as long as they’re quiet. Give me walls of trees and bushes and tall weeds.

Give me anything but a summer of firecrackers.

What is it about the people in my neighborhood who spend hundreds of dollars every year on little bombs just so they can hear loud noises? They don’t even make pretty designs in the sky. Just noise and smoke. And sometimes they blow their fingers off, like the man Joan was talking to on the corner of 44^th and 8^th Avenue yesterday. He was smart enough to speak Egyptian Arabic, Spanish, and Italian. But, he still blew off his thumb. But the people don’t care about losing their fingers. They’d rather have loud sounds than fingers. They can set off the bombs with their stubs, with their teeth if they have to, with their toes if that’s all they have left.

And Shane and I hide inside or plant ourselves just outside the gate. Uh-uh. Joan can’t get us to go for a walk. Especially me. She can’t do it. Usually by July 6, the bombs stop. The people have spent all their money and I’m safe again, and, maybe sometime around the middle of July, I’ll venture more than three feet beyond the protection of the fence—unless it’s too hot. Then, just forget the whole thing..

Very strange, these humans. Very strange, indeed.

Best wishes from Juno