Why I Like Fireworks
Christopher Bond




My friends think my obsession with watching fireworks has something unnatural about it. I don't really know if this is symbolic of something missing in them, or in me. Fireworks are built for a purpose. They live their lives in breathless anticipation of that one, fiery moment when nothing else matters except what they were designed to do. Every ounce of energy goes into that moment, everything they could have spent years burning up slowly. They could have spent their life smoldering, but instead they hoard their lifeblood, waiting to release it all at once in a display so large, so beautiful, that they know that a child somewhere in the crowd below will remember.

I wonder sometimes what that would be like. If I could take every erg of energy that I have spent or will ever spend in my life, and burn it in one instant, what color would I be? What dizzying pattern would I weave in the night sky as I exploded? Who would remember me after I fell back to the Earth an empty shell?

And I know I'll never know. My life trickles out of me like water through a narrow crack in some cave wall. One drop at a time.

But haven't we all felt the desire to go up into the sky and burst into flame? To burn away our life’s power on actually living instead of preservation? To not be begging, when death comes to collect us, for just one more day because I haven't done everything I wanted to do?

I am aware that I could never do this. It isn't in me. The only times my life has been on the line have been accidents, or because of things I couldn't control. I've never lain on the yellow lines between lanes of traffic, just to feel the cars rushing by inches from my body. I've never jumped out of an airplane and wondered if, this time, my parachute would fail to open. I've never looked a man in the eyes as he pulled the trigger on the gun he held in my face.

Nor would I want to. This is the crux of the matter, of course - I am made to desire something other than what the fireworks have. Like a child with a dollar in a candy store unable to decide what to buy, I lack the courage, the conviction, the sureness of knowledge that this is how I want to spend what I have been given.

Which is why I like fireworks. Thry are given to do what I know I never will.