The brevity of fireworks
and people without patience who light marshmallows on fire.

It is impossible to buy
enough fireworks for a seven-year-old
to fill up the darkness that is
left by late coming of
night in July. The kind of
night that leaves everything bagels
half-eaten on the table
in the morning and the kind
of night that never remembers 
to lock the front door
because the only unwanted guests
are the moths. 
The dizziness of the summer noon
bleeds out slow like a 
clementine or a scabbed knee 
and everything smells
like watermelon wrists and hot dog buns
and the moon. You never look at the moon
on the fourth of July
because you don't
want to remember how young
you are-- you think that at least
you can burn longer than a firework--
I remember the stale slabs we would
slide out into the middle of the yard
to make our stage. Earlier in the evening
we could break water balloons like communion
and catch fireflies like sweat off
the brow of the stars that had
already ceded to the summer-- but
the dusk made us all anxious-- we all
felt like we were bleeding and we
kept checking our scabs to see if
they had healed. 
My father was the stalwart.
We would wait for the sun to set
before we began our attack on
the entity of the night and the
brevity of our own hot dog buns.
We roasted marshmallows while we waited
and I was the one who ate fire--
while my father and my uncle
waited patiently in the rotation 
of golden brown sugar-- I was still
the one who ate fire-- and maybe it
was because I know that we only had
enough fireworks for thirty minutes
and my brother thought they
could last us through the night--
we always slept uneasy as if something
else were going to burst into 
tears or golden sparks like
the sugar edges of a marshmallow.
And there is something so final about
lighting the last firework--
they always let me do it--
not my father, not my brother, not
my uncle. I took the match and backed
away a moment too slow. I always
thought that the sparks on my skin
might feel like dandylion seeds-- I would ask
if we had more sparklers
or bottle rockets or marshmallows
and the answer was always and 
quiet shake of the head.
The the bouquet was brief
and the silence after was long
like standing around the edge 
of an open grave and waiting
for someone to know what to say.