New year!

A Story by Jose Anilto

The turn of the year should serve for reflection, to correct directions, to look to the future. Artificial joy is only this: artificial, like fireworks.

Yesterday, at the end of the year. Midnight.

A child was complaining of hunger while his father lit a firework.

Late rentals, expired light bill, water about to be cut, and fireworks being burned.

Midnight. Sky lit by the colorful thunder of fireworks. An artificial joy in the air. Then music, drinks. Damn the neighbors. Damn the water and light bills, the children's hunger. That's joy. And joy has swept the dawn.

Today, new year.

Hangover, hunger, late bills. Where did the joy go? Where did the money from the burned fireworks go?

The child who yesterday complained of hunger, plays in the street, with the same disconsolate countenance. You don't see the father, he must be healing the hangover or making another son to abandon in the world.

The turn of the year should serve for reflection, to correct directions, to look to the future. Artificial joy is only this: artificial, like fireworks. Intense in the brightness, intense in the noise, colorful, but ephemeral. What remains longer is the uncomfortable smoke, the smoke of dreams not realized, of missed opportunities, of life's disillusionment. Drink to drown sorrows, but what drowns is perseverance, good sense, hope...