Entry #27

Red Sky Morning
by Mike Martinez


The sky is beautiful this morning, like garnets cast across the sky and it’s horrible too. I remember a time when a red sky in the morning meant it was going to be a bad day for sailors. Now, it’s a bad day for everyone. All those years of a president with his head in the sand about the global climate change has finally cost us.

The fires first started in the west just like always, sure they were worse than ever before, but no one cared- at first. When they began to erupt in Europe and Australia people began to worry. When the Amazon and Congo began to erupt as well there was global panic.

Those of us in the cities never worried too much, it was always out there someplace not in our own streets. Then it happened, Tulsa and Paris exploded on the same day shortly after dawn. We at last began to understand that our atmosphere had finally lost the battle to keep balance. Now any reflective surface was a potential hot spot where the fires could begin.

The glowing red dawn used to mean hot days and high winds at sea, now it carries the smell of char and devastation. The sun sweeps in, and the star that once gave us life now gives us death. Maybe it is only trying to stop humanity and return the Earth back into the natural garden it was meant to be. Or maybe, this is finally our end.


[Mike Martinez is an aspiring writer and resident of Chicago. Recently he became the Lead Member of the Scheduling Team for the Twilight Tales Reading series, which has been meeting weekly since 1993.]