It was a quiet twilight when the sky burst.

We were all sitting out on the half-swept porch, sipping our drinks with slow lips and speaking in mama's-baby whispers. All that could be heard was the clink of china ice in our lemonades and the husha-hush of our old-man lips. The summertime sky coiled above us like a magician reluctant to pack up his show, and as we talked too softly, the evening rocked like a negro lullaby with only the sounds of cricket-music and the A/C.

Ma and Daddy sat together on the love seat with Zinnia stretched out across from them. I sat Indian-style on the porch railing, my dirty bare toes hanging off, and hummed to myself as my honeyed head became sticky with the melting of the hot, pink afternoon. We chatted and finished the last of our Fig Newtons, conversations pleasantly slow with the heavy death of that hot, hot day running in our eyes and weighing down our lids. Our sleepy gaze drifted towards the bay; we could just see the outline of the bridge through an equally drowsy fog.

Just as Zinnia rolled herself into a kneeling position, looking a little bit as though she were about to pray, the half-and-half sky exploded.

I really have no idea why someone was setting off fireworks in the first place. Fourth of July had been nearly two months ago; there was not a hot dog or garishly yellow corncob in sight. Musing, I suggested that someone rich was celebrating their birthday. Daddy said it must have been the birthday of a beautiful woman in the city. Zinnia said the rich man was in love with her, then, and Daddy just smiled a little low smile and kissed Ma's knuckles.

For whatever reason, the fireworks continued, and with great blasts of color pushed the evening into the decidedness of nighttime. As the night show seethed on, I retreated from my perch atop the railing, almost fearful of being burned by all that angry beauty, and snuggled down into the soft safe laps of Ma and Daddy and even skinny Zinnia. From there, on our crowded love seat, Zinny's gangly legs spilling over the armrest and my feet skimming the ground, we watched the sky, swinging ever-so-lightly in a frightened breeze. I soon retreated to my bed, Zinnia, too, but our parents stayed out there until the last hiss had dissolved into the motherly bosom of night.

And on the night that fireworks cracked the sky so bad it would need to be sewn up, that night of unplanned beauty, he chose to end his life. It was a subtle act, really. He simply slipped off the bridge, the same that was just out of my fingers' reach when I stretched my hand towards the horizon, crouched atop the porch railing. Away he fell, unnoticed by groggy drivers whose eyes were alight with those bright, bright colors. As the sticky sugar of the stars was ripped from the sky by the tremors of that fire, he slid away under the iciness of water.

That was all on the night the sky burst, like an overripe peach; like the swollen hearts of two lovers deceiving themselves into a night-long youth, souls nearly bursting from all that beauty; like my fast-fading dreams as I jolted from my sleep, turning to look through my thin-curtained window where the blackness had swallowed every memory of splendor, a hungry-babe sky chewing up all that was lovely.

But did my artist-boy, my brother-love, did he want to be the beauty that tore the Heavens, or to escape it? Or perhaps he did not even notice it, so high above him, instead only focusing on his ravenous, fast-moving lips, stubbly and scratchy as I remember them on the days I held his face in my hands and nearly lost them to his prickly prettiness, my hungry, baby-big brother.

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