One of the apartment windows was shattered. I wish it would let in a breeze, but it's sweltering outside, so there's no relief.
When the bomb went off, it was like a piece of the sun fell down onto a building not far away. In the long minutes afterward, the cracking of machine guns. Distant, muffled. Morse code rhythms that only ever carry one message.
The shooting was followed by the mourning call of sirens, maybe the worst of all because of the meaning they carry, the desperation and hope; despite it all, someone is trying to help someone else, bleeding in the street, blinded, or buried by broken masonry and rubble.
It's strange that we call them sirens. There's nothing alluring about that wail, nothing seductive. I would never go near a thing that made a sound like that. It's a warning.
Why is it so hard to make anything beautiful or meaningful, and why is it so easy to tear it down, to turn it to shit?