I look around me, the luminescent flames, huddled of people crying all around me, their tears hitting the pavement and it’s the events that brought me here that make me regret ever dragging myself out of my bed. I should have stayed home, trusted my gut instinct that engulfed me as soon as I woke up, but alas I didn’t, hence the shit-show in front of me.

The middle of the reunion wasn’t so bad, but that’s about it. The beginning was so bland and akward as I got to know familiar faces, the end was a flaming disaster, but the normalcy I craved so bad was explicit in the middle of it.

I was just getting to talk to my mother, for the first time in years after the fight that tore our family to shambles for years. Just as I felt hope in my horizon, it fell through my fingers like sand when my dad had arrived.

There was a cold look to his eyes, the same ones that haunted my dreams, I was preparing for another showdown, but that’s not where today took it’s wicked turn, that started concocting earlier in the day.

Unbeknownst to all, my family’s relatives were planning on fireworks, they were laying in a tote and at the moment I was talking to my father a kid was playing in the tote.

About 5 minutes later we heard a boom and a kid hysterically crying.

I roll out of my bed and click off my alarm, I don’t think I’ll go to that reunion, I think as I click off my alarm clock and go right back to bed, contemplating the monstrosity of the dream I just had.