My veins thunder drowning out the dizzy cacophony from the Shanghai streets. The sun hangs still a cornerstone in the sky. High pitched chirps of young school-girls fluttering past me a colorful array of navy blue skirts blood-red ties spilling from their necks heading towards the large commercial mall nestled comfortably in between my arms. Businessmen in staunch, death-black suits wither weighted down by their suitcases by their homemaker wife waiting at home watching their husbands be swallowed up by light and 12 hours later, emerge from an abyss of shadows. A mother’s voice rings out scrambling to cut through the bedlam to reach a bouncing child drifting among a current of pedestrians. Abruptly, a rumbling sounds underfoot deep and whole the earth moaning in agony. Swallowing shrill shrieks of surprise from the schoolgirls’ blood rimmed mouths bewildering grunts of astonishment from towering death-clothed businessmen the mother’s voice skipping like a record from fear to frenzy laced the child still wandering floating above the sea. Seconds staggered on by thousands of furrowed faces raised to heaven. A split second slammed like a guillotine The sky exploded. My body is shattered. Chunks of me were blasted off My skeleton gleaming like polished silver in the sun Layers of me hunch against the sidewalks. The schoolgirl’s red had burst like fireworks inside her The businessmen’s black had ascending into wisps of putrid ashes The mother lay silent, Face smashing into the cement sidewalk Her toddler left to wail on the edge. |