All of us with our downturned faces in the blue light of our phones, save the guy with his back on the bricks watching traffic, bus after bus that isn’t ours and here, the flashing orange light of the lineman’s bucket truck heralding the first fat drops of rain. They had been coming all morning, and all that prelude was blushing up to a melody, pattering on my jacket shoulders.
Hot pink and white light flashed against us, pinning us to the wall, suddenly out of the sky. The group of us looked up from our feast just in time to see the last few snaking slashes, striking just behind that row of buildings there, maybe in the alley. The low sound rose and washed over us. I stole glances all around, until a young woman found my eyes in her own stealing, and there was that same grinning wonder as if to say together, “that was close!”…