Sunset Dawn
An imaginative composed by Scarlett (Year 11 Advanced)
August 6th, 1945
8:20am: Saori
The mushroom-shaped lesion engulfing the sky has transformed life into something fragile, cracking and shattering before our view, if our eyes have not already vaporised. Perhaps those whose lives were immediately lost are the lucky ones, for they will not face the jaws of this new hell.
No.
My body has betrayed my mind.
I have just killed my grandmother.
Her very being is now intangible in this damned reality.
I am at fault, not the blood-orange star of man that has torn the sky open in a sunless dawn.
In those final moments, realising she did not follow, my heart collapsed. Melancholy eyes stared back, the colour of cinnamon buns. The cinnamon buns that you will never forget, because they were the first thing she comforted you with when life fell apart. The bomb did not disperse her in the cinematic way displayed on television. The outline of her body is imprinted into a stamp of ash on the path I had just walked upon.
I look up from under the concrete barrier. All I comprehend is Obaachan’s absence in the sky. Not the corpses lining the street, nor the numb skin disrobing my burned flesh. I cannot even remember my name.
The heavens weep scarlet in a scream of betrayal directed at humanity, like Buddha himself has broken peace. Yet my mind remembers differently. The sky was a feathery blue. A fleeting gentleness, now a lie. That was the sky Obaachan saw.
8:13am: Obaachan
Today the sky is gentle, dappled with clouds, and nostalgic light is cast over the awakening city. Saori noticed it, too, her eyes glistening in remembrance as she looks forward, towards her future. It is her last day of high school, after all.
A crow caws above, startling my heart into spasms. Perhaps the black omen framing the blue is a signal to finally notify Saori of my fragility. No. Her eyes still turn to me, expectant. I am her anchor, her grandmother.
“Saori, today you leave school and step into society,” I exclaim through the pain, “but for today, you’re just my little bean again.”
“You’re my whole world, Obaachan. I couldn’t have gotten here without you.” Saori giggles. “Don’t worry, I will always be your bean.”
She fails to realise that it may not be her last day as my bean, but mine as her Obaachan. With each tightening pulse of my chest, liberation nears. Out of my broken body, out of the nursing home, into the sky. Saori knows where to look for me once I’m gone.
We have our places. Saori’s, the beginning: the first traces of pink light marking the dawn of a lifetime. Mine, the fading navy of dusk transitioning to twilight afterlife, exemplified by the resignation of my heart.
I am content with my imminent release. I only regret my inability to witness Saori soar beyond school, beyond the drag path of mortality.
My heart contracts into knots, a familiar, invading sensation.
8:15am: Obaachan
A burst of heat blinds my senses, bedazzled by sunlight breeding destruction and a violent, invisible blow that knocks us to the ground, stealing lungs and awareness.
The false sun forms clouded jaws, biting down on the atmosphere until all Japan’s sins are squeezed from the sky’s wounds. Peace bleeds into the manifestation of war, an engineered sun god.
Saori grips my forearm in an attempt to pull me under a nearby bench, yet my heart constricts into dozens of snakes until moving is pointless. I clutch the snakes, smiling, knees anchored to the blackened pavement.
Saori gazes with anguished eyes, pressing herself below the concrete. I cannot bear to meet them. All I know is that she won’t die, and I am relieved of that. Fire fogs my vision with memory: her first steps, then her tiny hand in my own as we walked the daily path to school.
As my heart and body give out in fumes and failure, clarity clouds in, delivering my soul into twilight salvation.
8:24am: Saori
Memories of Obaachan’s hand wrapped warmly in mine, then her deep, radiant smile lines, flood my vacant mind as I stare hollowly at the black silhouette on the pavement.
Blood burns in my throat.
Ash lights toxic spires in the gloomed sky, for it has just undergone a cruel metamorphosis from the pleasant cloak of blue it wore before being poisoned by the sun of man. As fumes break past my numb cloak and dig into bone, pain engulfs my limp body, hidden, yet not hidden enough.
Not hidden from the tethers of grief that already rip my skin apart worse than the bomb ever could.
I cannot register the hysterical wails surrounding me. Nothing is real now.
Each of these people began their morning differently, yet it is clear now that every citizen of Hiroshima will end August 6th in the same way: a summer’s day so brutal it peaked at over 4000°C, and the moon, disguised by a veil of ash, will rise on a new dusk.
