by-standers

The houses were on fire. That’s it. Nothing special, nothing completely cool or strangely important. The thing is… we already saw it coming, we sat in our wooden rocking chairs and watched them burn. We hummed lullabies into the ashy gray air and quietly observed the frantic people inside the homes. They struggled to escape: a struggle we were too timid to face. We were taught to be outsiders; to stay uninvolved in everything. Our muscular fathers with rough callused hands and our caring mothers gave us our view. Our stance. We weren’t anything but by-standers, and so we watched everything burn. The chaos that sat in front of us couldn’t change us. We were weak little beings who watched it all burn down to the ground.