with ever increasing faith, we decided to go ahead and just ignore them, despite tremendous pressure to capitulate and fade

This is life at ground zero. The blast radius is huge, the ground glowing coals, the air on fire. I was close enough to see the cloud rise, my hand still on the trigger that threw the switch.

I made this happen. I started the exchange of things that go boom. But I'm still here.



Seemingly, so is everything else. Glowing, crackling, burnt to ash, burnt to cinders...seared yellow and brown from the heat waves...everything I still recognize, ruined and scattered in sharp and flinted shards, is still here.

Breathing is difficult. Movement, right now, is impossible. All I can do is turn, and turn, and turn, and try to find anything resembling a landmark. They are few and far between, and fewer remaining.



Everything in me said this was the right action. No one ever told me it wouldn't solve anything. No one ever said the bomb could be dropped, and then life would go on.

No one ever told me life after the boom would be harder than life before it.



Soon the rain will fall, radiant and damaging, and we will see how deep the sickness goes. At some point, there may need to be more care taken; at some point, there may need to be a separation, final and absolute.

Right now, I'm just trying to find magnetic north, because all my compasses are broken.

(Images drawn from a variety of sources, including Ambient Light, GameTrailers.com, the Polish blog Wassup Michael, a still image from a video seen at ITN, and Michelle Shocked's blog. Or at least, the Michelle who's using michelleshocked as part of her web address...)