Sparklers

We’re writing our names with sizzles of light to celebrate the fourth. I use the loops of cursive, make a big B like the sloping hills on the west side of the lake. The rest, little a,r, one small b, spit and fizz as they scratch the night. On the side of the shack where we bought them, a handmade sign: Trailer Full of Sparkles Ahead, and I imagine crazy chrysanthemums, wheels of fire, glitter bouncing off metal walls. Here, we keep tracing in tiny pyrotechnics the letters we were given at birth, branding them on the air. And though my mother’s name has been erased now, I write it, too: a big swooping I, a hissing s, an a that sighs like her last breath, and then I ring belle, belle, belle in the sulphuric smoky dark.