Fireworks.

Sitting on that stone wall of someone’s front lawn every year, watching colors explode in the dark sky, cut in places by telephone cables weaving through the sky, hospital in the background to the left, schoolyard and playground in the foreground across the now-deserted street.

Learning complicated Japanese patty-cake games with long-time friends while parents chit chat behind us and brothers yell and run, then stop to watch our fast moving hands in awe.

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Fireworks.

Party and laughter and games and lots of food, fighting for a spot on the windowsill while balancing a champagne glass full of fizzy grape juice from the supermarket to watch the New Year’s celebrations.

Charging upstairs to my bedroom for a better view of the finale with my best friend, while the boys downstairs fight over the living room porthole, glasses abandoned on the dinner table on the way up, little miracles launched off from the mall downtown.

The hyper little blonde boy who somehow manages to get hurt every year, even when he really didn’t mean too, and we’re all expecting it while dreading the inevitable at the same time.

Sleeping bags pathetically separated in their own dark corner, giggling and the sound of scratchy magic markers on printer paper in the basement, swapping stories and gossip from different schools.

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Fireworks.

Feeling wrong in a place that has nothing to do with age old traditions that have gone on since I-can’t-even-remember-when, but feeling perfectly right wrapped in the loving embrace of a broken-hearted girl.

Balancing act of friends, running back and forth with locations passed through cell phone, trying but failing not to disappoint either party, because I’m biased and wanting to spend more time with a certain someone.

Wanting to do the right thing, but not able to bring myself to, because I’ve never missed a firework, and I don’t want to start now. I’m a terribly traditional person sometimes, I just can’t help it.

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Fireworks.

I’m sorry.