Colors in the sky.

With everything that has happened the thing that has resonated with me is the color of the sky. And especially the night sky. Every time I look up, the colors, the brightness, both are ever changing. Just a year ago it was as it had always been, Blue skies and black nights. Then the Week of War changed all of that. Actually less than seven days but the name stuck. The colors of the sky change like the Northern lights everywhere there was an event during the war. Social restlessness, and political transitions across the globe was the seed. What was the spark? There will be a debate forever on that. Like everything, everyone has an opinion. The first bomb went off just off the coast of NYC on an early Sunday morning of an exceptionally warm May. Not in a van under a building, in the cargo hold of a Asian freighter. The “Hóng rì” or “Red Sun '', picked up a wooden crate in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen. Someone realized you don’t have to put the explosion in the middle of the city, just near enough and it’ll do the damage. At 4:11 am the Hong Ri pushed into Upper Bay ignoring the radio calls from the Coast Guard. The NYPD Harbor Unit was mobilized and started to shadow the boat for a suggested attempt to get onto the boat. Initially the thought was it had a mechanical malfunction and was out of control. But it was much worse. Just as they mobilized a plan, the sun came out early that day. And forever changed the NYC skyline. The next six days were unbelievable, while the whole world watched and reacted to the explosion, fear and insanity unraveled us all. Two days later a military group in Russia pulled free from the government and fired multiple warheads into Europe, and one into Britain, one last one was sent to the US, the target was never known; it was taken out over the Pacific by a US satellite defense system. For a minute prior to all of that it seemed that it was something we would be able to live with and work our way through. But that attack set off a wave of mistrust and fear, throughout all of the governments. Borders, airports, seaports, even all the trains in Europe sat on rails wherever they last stopped, cold boilers and void of life. Transmissions beamed in the silence between governments all over the world. Whispers of talks that should have stopped what happened next. Then it was Friday, when the world burned. Ten or more nuclear explosions went off that day. Russia of course was hit 3 times, the US wasn’t so lucky the second time, two out of four. One hit halfway between Corpus Christi and Galveston Texas, taking out 90% of our fuel refineries. The second hit Los Angeles, they estimate six million killed within one day there. That day the world shook and became broken. The last explosion was from a dysfunctional warhead that landed close to Washington DC but failed to fire. On Saturday as a bomb team worked on the device a fail-safe timer clocked out. Another scar on the planet, more fire in the sky. But more so the last explosion took me with it. Sara, my wife, she was a health lobbyist for a drug company. And was in Washington DC, meeting with senators for passage of a bill. She couldn’t afford an in-town hotel on the company's voucher, so she stayed just outside of town, close by. There wasn’t any time to even breathe after that. But I had to, for Mia, our daughter was all I had left. Just four, she wasn’t able to understand anything. I just kept holding her after Saturday as much as I could. And still tried to function doing all the daily functions that was expected. But in the afternoons, I’d walk out to the porch with her as the day waned. We’d sit in a rocker and watch the evening fall. I held my child, she held a small heart shaped locket, a match for the one my wife wore, with pictures inside. One of us three, one just Mia. It tapped the back of my arm as she clutched it and me as I rocked the chair, watching the colors of the sky.