-Your heart
-The heart of the one you're with
-The memories of all the fireworks you've seen in the past
-Thoughts of family and friends you desperately want to be with
-All that sulfur and ash that you're going to go home smelling like later
I love those fireworks that make your sternum vibrate in your chest. The ones so large and spectacular that you don't even notice the rest of the beautiful night sky. The ones in specially modified shapes and the ones that look like a golden umbrella. I never, repeat, NEVER, get too old for fireworks.
The earliest ones I remember must have been when I was three or four. My cousin, Amanda, and I, were scared of the loud sound they made, so while our parents and grandparents sat outside, Amanda and I watched through the windshield of the car. Once the noise was gone, I remember how spectacular they were. I continued watching the fireworks in Canton, Illinois, every year until I was ten or eleven. And since then, I may have been on the deck of my neighbor's house, or at a baseball game with my dad, or at a Sky Sox game with Tom and nearly his ENTIRE extended family, or at a soccer game with Kellen and his dad who was completely wasted... but they were all wonderful. Because they all had fireworks.
Tonight I had the first fireworks experience shared happily with one person only: my new roommate. I begged him to go down to the lake. They were fireworks, after all - how could you have an appropriate fourth of July with no fireworks? And because he realized it would make me happy, he went. And I think he enjoyed himself. It made me love him even more, the way I was able to cuddle up to him with enough anonymity where no one would whisper, people would simply smile and maybe think, "What a sweet and terribly attractive looking couple."
Cookouts come and go. Cities pass, and I can think of people in St. Louis, Knoxville, Lakewood, Greeley, and even Las Cruces, New Mexico, that I would have absolutely loved to be with tonight. But these fireworks were different. These fireworks were solidified. They were simple, powerful, and shared with the one I love.