Parade! Boisterous noises wahmbam their way to you. They’re fighting one another, jostling, sparring, tumbling over one another to press down into the black stillness of your ears. Yellow! Blue! Red! Orange! Bursts of colors carried on flags and in the thin plastic of balloons and in hair ribbons and in banners clamor for your attention. Look here! Look at me! Look, look, look! There are feet and shoes everywhere, criss-crossing, jogging, schleping and walking. Balloons blunder obediently behind their children, dragging haphazardly along the dusty ground. Small faces are pressed desperately into the soft, cool respite of white ice cream on a cone.
The people (not you, but them) march now, in sun-drunken line-like configurations. Students mill about in school uniforms that have been pressed into obedience. The crowd seems to masticate to the disorganized stomp and slosh and shuffle.
And then the cheers rise up from their throats, as if there was helium in their balloons, and the veterans come. They come into the maw of the crowd, into the chewing, spitting, chaos, in a neat line of antique cars. Faces press like lovers into ice cream. Children yank their balloons. Friends hiss gossip.
Last year there were seven cars. This year there are three.
What will these revelers do- these gorging, bulging, staring, gluttonous eyes- what will they do next year or the year after that?
Did four people die? Egads!
p.s. your blog is impossible to read because of the (blue! pink!) yellow background…
…better?