My Country is burning

I like that title. "My country is burning".

It is black, and it is red and the waves of heat warp our vision so that we struggle to recognise landscapes as our own. They can't be ours. They are burnt, and black, red embers, orange licks of flame that light up the brown, ash filled skies.

I am so sick of summer, the Australian trademark. Burning its name onto the land. Marysville, a town I visited when I was 11 years old... it had beautiful snow, lovely old houses, nestled in trees and bushes. There was a car museum, and local shops where my sister and I bought book to colour in, and stickers to put in them. Marysville no longer exists. The land is there, but it is burnt, broken, charred and disappeared.

So many people have died in ways that you don't want to imagine too closely for the horror of it. Burnt alive. Or perhaps more mercifully, they passed out from smoke before they were killed in the flame.

Seperated families. Whole families. Lovers. Unrequited loves. Children.

I can't bear to think about it, but how could you bear not too?