Here is Anthem’s take on everyone. 

Jabberwock starts off as a bouncy, almost whimsical pop song then kicks you in the gut with crunchy guitar at the chorus and shreds until the end and drops out like someone pulled the plug. Fun when unsupervised but some structure would make the chaos jammable to a wider audience. 

Tybalt is slide guitar rockabilly, full of loss and blue collar could-have-beens. A soundtrack for late night whiskey and reminiscing, and like both, is comforting  but can inadvertently hurt you if you aren’t careful with them. 

I can’t quite decide if Kilroy is well-structured German industrial or dive bar Strummer-punk. Whichever, he is solid and has an agenda. I don’t envy that he has to write the reports for what the rest of us get up to, but it says something that he does. 

T’Ana is jukebox classic rock, the kind that Hollywood directors like to lay down as counterpoint under scenes of onscreen violence. I’m not sure why it works, but it does. The lyrics are smart, but not everybody gets their layers of meaning. I always just assume that there is a gun in the glovebox, and there is a certain sense of reliability in that.

When I saw it, the darkness swept in. When it showed me what it had done to her, my vision went dark, so close to blacking out to keep the image out of my head. There in that moment of darkness, it wasn’t real. It was a trick, a mistake. It wasn’t her. It hadn’t happened to her because of what I am. In that moment of darkness, it was someone else's mother. 

I tried to hold on to that moment for as long as I could. I think that, if I had just let the darkness stay, I could have stayed cold and numb and time would have hung there like that in that moment between moments and she would not be gone as long as I kept my eyes shut.

But the smallest of flames flickered, barely an ember, an orange arrhythmic pulse. A call. I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding and the ember took that breath and blossomed into a flame. I could feel my body breathing hard and ragged, a mile away. With each breath, the flame grew, chasing the cold, burning the numbness out. 

I opened my eyes and the image was still there on the screen.The searing pain took hold, keeping me in the moment, making it real.The fire roared into my chest. The heat of it rushed up my neck to my face and became a boiling throbbing in my temples. I had to let it out or it would consume me. The screen went dark and the fire jumped to the wicks of the candles lighting the sanctum, reducing them to puddles of wax in seconds. I had to get out of there before I burned the whole place down around me. Someone said something as I walked out of the door but I wasn’t ready to hear it.

I don’t know how I got to their house. My car was there so I must have driven. The neighborhood was out, gathered around my parent’s house in a protective crowd. Hands and faces held me as I passed through them. I was heading towards the house but the hands and faces guided me towards one of the ambulances parked nearby. Pop was there being checked out by an EMT. We stood there for a long time, holding each other and sobbing because we had no words. 

The neighborhood folded us into their embrace, the whole crowd swaying as one. Someone in the crowd started singing, a song we had all sang a thousand times at church, at once mournful and ever hopeful. A song that carried the weight of innumerable crowds gathered like this to share the burden of tragedies befallen neighbors. A song that promised healing and brighter days if we can just hold each other up for a little longer. 

I opened a window in my soul and let a little of the fire free, enough to keep me from burning up in my own rage. The faces and hands of the neighborhood each took a piece of it, tiny flames joining the fires already kindled in each of their hearts. Soon, we were all singing, mournful but ever hopeful. Mom would have wanted it that way.