When Sparks Speak Fire

by Mickey Kenny

Bruised clouds hung above the barb-wired fences. Sharp silver threads punctured the pregnant sky. It was raining. Dennis laid on his back, his open face twitching from each rain drop that fell. He tried to suppress his facial muscles as Vietcong guerillas scanned the area for any survivors. For his whole life Dennis was afraid of death, now he was more afraid of being alive. He felt his fingers bend around the black curves of his knife’s handle. If any guerillas noticed his breath, he would choose to take his own life, or at least that’s what his hand was telling him.

The mortars had stopped falling, but their shadowy smoke trails curled through cracked windows: swirling pillars of grey-smoke rose above the prison. Northern Vietnamese captives broke through the shattered walls, as prison guards became their targets. Dennis listened to his friend Ken get brutally beaten by the prisoners before they ran through the torn down fence. He could feel the dirt get kicked up from their feet and land on his uniform, he wanted the dirt to bury him; this felt like his grave. He heard his friend’s lungs slowly collapsing—shrinking, closing—Dennis wanted to run over and scream the wind into his mouth. Ken was helpless, unable to move, soon to be swallowed by the flames that crackled hints of a slow death. Dennis tried to keep his eyes and mouth closed but he could no longer ignore the cries of his friend. “Ken!” He started with a whisper. “Ken! Be quiet.”

Just then more mortars dropped from the sky: metal rain-drops flooding the compound with fierce flames. This time there were no screams and the footprints of the escaped prisoners led to silence. Dennis realized they would not drop bombs if guerillas were still scanning the area for would-be hostages. He jerked his neck off of the ground and tilted it towards the echoes of Ken’s screams from a moment ago. Dennis’s eyes were singed by the sight of burning flesh. Everything looked like blood.

“Ken! Ken!

***

Cumulous clouds were scattered across the blue-silk sky. Dennis gazed out the window of his Cessna admiring the coast of Florida. The white capped waves pulsated into shore with rhythms that softened the sand. The sun floated in the ocean of the sky: a golden pearl coated with light. Dennis flew his plane further up the coast towards Cape Canaveral. His wife sat next to him in the co-pilot seat. Her hair brushed behind her headset. Dennis loved nothing more then seeing his wife stare outside her window talking into the microphone nestled against her soft red lips—he would listen to her voice gently pour through his headphones into his thirsty ears.

“How close do you think we’re allowed to get to the Discovery Shuttle?”

Dennis took a moment to respond.

“I’m not completely sure, but we’ll error on the side of caution.”

The previous night Dennis had surprised his wife Linda by telling her that they were going to fly up the coast to Cape Canaveral and watch the launch of the Discovery Shuttle. It was exactly two-days before her birthday and he told her that the rocket would like an upside down candle at lift-off.

He looked down at his watch, “only a couple minutes until they launch it.”

She smiled genuinely. He stared out his window; they were obviously very close to the launch site. White buildings, fences, people, equipment, all cluttered the shoreline; he started to wonder why rocket-ships were always white, like they were flags of surrender sent up to space. He drifted into thought.

“I had no idea the Kennedy Space Center was so big!” Linda exclaimed.

Dennis’s eyelids were motionless and his heart started beating faster. It felt like a fist was squeezing his stomach and pressing in on his chest. His breathes became shallow, barely reaching down his constricting throat. The image of white flags and the name Kennedy ignited something inside of him. He thought of fire. He thought of the fire that swallowed his friend in Vietnam, and how he couldn’t look at it—his eyes started to burn behind his glass window. Linda must have felt a change in the air.

“Aren’t we getting a little to close?” She trusted that he knew what he was doing, but she wanted to break the fragile oxygen between them as Dennis shifted around nervously. All he could think about was the fire about to burst from under the Discovery Shuttle. He wanted to stare at it, this time from above—like the clouds on the day of Ken’s death. This time he wanted to watch the whole thing without the sounds of pain breaking from a loved one’s mouth: shattering teeth like they were glass.

“Dennis, honey….we’re getting too close.”

He kept his eyes fixated towards the bottom of the Shuttle as his heart pulsated against his chest. Then he removed his headset.

My name is Mickey Kenny. I enjoy nature and empty journals. I am kind of discouraged by society and full journals. I very much enjoy SLAM poetry. I was born in Anchorage, Alaska. Now I live in Bellingham, Washington. I go to Fairhaven College-it is beautiful. I love to learn, I hope things continue as such. I am 22 years of age.