Setting Sun

From September, during Hurricane Katrina. I posted it for a day, and then took it down...I didn't like it for some reason, but now I've forgotten why.




The tattered newspaper slipped from its perch atop her head and fell into the gutter, accompanied by three drops of sweat from the ends of her weathered, wrinkled fingertips. It was hot. Very hot. The air was thick with the perfume of rotting trash but even that was overpowered by the scent of suffering humanity. Fumes from raw sewage and sweat from bodies that could not afford to lose it swirled through the streets.

A small child, maybe six years old stumbled down the middle of the street half naked and completely alone, blurred in the lazy vapors of summer. A few flies buzzed around the old woman's face but she did not swat them away. Somewhere in the block a gunshot sounded a violent stacatto - but the old woman did not flinch. Above them, a woman had been screaming for help from a rooftop balcony for a quarter of an hour. Some eyed the building uneasily, but noone helped. The strong must survive. Finally the screaming stopped and a shirtless man climbed over the pile of bricks that blocked the building's doorway. He looked up the street at the crowds before stuffing his hands in his pockets and disappearing amidst the chaos.

Overhead, a helicopter with a man in a tie and a camera buzzed and thumped low, whipping up palm branches and scattering debris including a few pebbles and a handful of grit that lodged themselves in the old woman's pitted, wrinkled face, but she didn't look up to investigate or turn away for protection. Thwock. Thwock. A few in the crowd shouted at the chopper, held signs or screamed in frustration. The old woman did nothing. Across the street two gangmembers, five single mothers, and a policeman shattered the window of a convenience store in their search for uncontaminated water. For a second the shards of glass tinkled and sang through the air with the song of a windchime in a May breeze - but just for a second as they crashed chaotically to the asphalt. The store yielded only a few gallons which were commandeered by the policeman - who had a gun. A mile away, a family of five is arrested by three other officers of the law for looting water from a Wal*Mart. They've had nothing for four days and are now in handcuffs, too dazed and exhausted to cry out against the injustice.

The old woman sat in her chair and stared down her street, stared at the shadows of her city, stared unblinklingly into the setting sun. She will continue to stare until someone - maybe her son, maybe a stranger - pulls a sheet over her lifeless eyes.



please help.

please.