Where for Watch Waipahu New Year’s Eve, 2010

“Why’re we stopping?”

“This the best place.”

Skeptical, Esme opened the door, careful of the guardrail. There, she stood in the narrow space between.

They had parked just before the exit curved down, merging with Farrington Hwy. The high school was visible still, but the neighborhoods….

There were no houses or streetlight poles, only shingled rafts and creosote pilings surfacing from a smoldering sea. Coloring the smoky depths, streetlamps glowed; sparklers and morning glories flared. Far away, the firecrackers’ staccato ebbed and flowed. Chromatic streaks, there and there, breached the surface to ascend and, at apex, bloom violent.

“It is….”