#july 4 2023

[card-of-the-day]

Today's Card Is: Sparks

[qsmpphotoalbum]

[th3-0bjectivist]

Cemeteries in Charlotte, NC 04JUL23

New year, new home. Boston -> Charlotte

At Elmwood Cemetery, I went on a walk to remember the dead.

Also sauntered over to Old Settler's Cemetery.

Let me know if anyone spots any ghosts.

Old city, old gravestones going back to the mid 1700's.

As well as some very interesting and time warped masonry.

Try to recall those that came before you today.

And happy 4th.

[theworldisyonces]

Beyoncé & JAY-Z at the all white, 4th of July celebration party at Michael Rubin's mansion in the Hamptons (7/4/23).

[xgeminixmoonx]

[microcosme11]

[myfavebandfizz]

Hell Of A Ride

[ghoulsticle]

Yungblud concert last night, fucking amazing🖤

[shadowdemon-gd]

Happy Fourth of July to America. And a big fuck you to Lauren Boebert, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Supreme Court, and the rest of you traitors. If you support Donald Trump, the Confederate flag, or the Nazi flag, you lost the right to say you love America

[averbaldumpingground]

There's fireworks over the Hudson tonight, that he's pretty damn sure he shouldn't even be watching. They make him skittish. They make him lose time.

But it's been like that since they brought him back from Afghanistan. Or maybe it was Iraq.

Loud noises, cars. That one time he went to the dentist. He knows better than to think he'll be allowed back.

At least not until he starts taking the anti-psychotics again. And he sure as fuck won't ever be doing that.

Not willingly. Not after how bad it had gotten the last time.

So yeah, maybe sitting out on the fire escape where the explosions are louder and make him hallucinate being holed up in foxhole in what his brain's convinced is World War II isn't the brightest idea he's ever had.

But if he had any bright ideas, well, hey, he probably wouldn't have joined up right out of high school. Or driven over that IED outside of Jalalabad or Hillah or wherever the fuck it even was. He thinks it was Jalalabad, but just like time, his memory is fuzzy at the edges.

And that's the worst of it, he thinks. Not the delusions. So what if his brain's decided it's seventy-whatever years ago and he's the star of his very own extremely fucked up sequel to Saving Private Ryan.

It's how the rest of it feels fake. Like he can't even trust the constant, phantom pain.

But it's not there, his arm. And he can still recall the blood, the way he screamed. He knows he lost it when that IED exploded, and--

--and then he's back, it's like it was the fucking Alps, or something. And not the sand that he could swear that he's still finding in his boots. And there's another voice, a name.

It's not his name, he knows, so why's he always try to answer?

The sparks fly blue and white and red. He knows he's heard that other name before.

Except he doesn't know a single goddamned thing. Not where he's lost the arm, not why he's so convinced he's got a sister. The brain damage is probably the worst of it. He never used to wake up screaming, convinced that there's some government conspiracy that's monitoring his thoughts. He never used to be obsessed with JFK.

And there's that name, the one that someone calls him in his head. It sounds like what you'd name the family dog.

[mermaidinthecity]

bonniemckee: Land of the free home of the Slay. 🧨

[qsmpphotoalbum]

[harveyspictures]

Fireworks seen from the water at Coney Island, July 4, 2023

[vyxart]

[lavenderforroses]

[nando161mando]

"America is on stolen indigenous land"