Jan. 14, 2004 @ 4:46 p.m.

We all watched as the image coming together on the television screen screamed different words to us silently in our hearts. We all watched the same thing but we also all saw something completely different. My personal, inaudible whisper was more of a comic book sound effect, “Crack.” Like something enormous, bending, breaking, falling or crashing into smaller sections and pieces. Like the crackling sound of soda mixing with Pop-rocks. Like fire snapping the twigs and life from a tree as oxygen fuels the raging, soft and almost silent, natural beast. What I saw isn’t on the tip of my tongue. It isn’t on the back of my mind or even in the top one hundred of my most vivid memories but the feeling that I had as I sat there in the midst of my shattering heart, I don’t even remember at what point logic kicked in. I don’t recall figuring out that all of these sounds and whispering effects coming from the busted speakers of the television was really just the rupturing of my heart and along with it, my spirit. The burning wasn’t happening to trees, it was the reel of my movie in the process of being destroyed and engulfed. The crackling of the chemical reaction between soda and Pop-rocks wasn’t actually a chemical reaction at all. It was the vocal cords in the back of my throat being cut by tiny little men with even smaller hatchets who have launched an assault before on my ability to speak. No one should ever have enough power to encompass all of this, yet somehow, unknowingly, you tricked the universe into giving you a little slice of that deadly pie. The pie that I took a bite of in front of over fifty pairs of eyes.