There Will Be Fireworks
Scraps from a notebook
Free Fireworks in the Park
Behind us, Cantonese spoons itself like soup between a family. A whirr of French, then the home language, a cushion of song, soft as candlelight from bright rooms whose open-curtained dinners start up warmly one by one like bonfires on a coastline. The lamplight paints us gold, like we’re its gods. A nine-year-old girl in brushed-cotton nightie stands on a council wheelie to see from her front path her dad (earring, rollup) having a beer with a friend. The sky is a well we are emerging from. Good-naturedly siphoned through the gates our twos and threes disperse like particles. Then density increases by degress. A mum only barely taller than her red-sweatshirted son: “It’s not just fireworks, trust me." The night’s as dark as it’s going to get. A brown-smudged blue, a muddy toddler’s coat and we, beneath it, watching the crane contraption, stomp our feet, and wait.
Boom!
In the…
