Our lives are as weak as paper burning

Picture this: paper burning. Flames lick the edges. They curl, brown, and peal away like dead skin. Smoke saturates, encompasses and crowns the air. Black appears, consumes and eats the white, while the yellow fire grows with power, grins triumphantly in gold and laughs in red/orange/crimson.

Picture this: the car misses the turn and leaves the road, overturning. Everything is flying, the boy behind the wheel, the bikes in the back, the cell phone that I never find. Tumbling, tossing, flying momentarily with eerie grace. Smacking the tree, eating the ground; the tree sheers and cries with anguish. The boy dies with the night and the bright stars as his only witness.

The wheels spin and then, all is silence.

Our lives are as weak as paper burning. One snow capped Iris blooms in his garden, like a lost angel, and baby blue swallows sing a hungry song from the bird-house. I long to look in, to see them in their innocence. I satisfy myself with sitting on the snowboard bench, witnessing the proud parents dance, watching them bring food to their young.