The sky in Newton St streaked purple with full, gelatinous clouds -- jelly donuts set to burst at any second.

Palm trees rolled, like silk, across restless winds, and the scent of almonds folded its way through notes of dust and salt.

These days, if you look at the sky too long, your ears begin to ring.

The world starts to feel too heavy, pressing weights against your temples, and stirring a dizzying vibration from your chest.

When the odd phenomena started, a local pastor explained it's because grief itself is a roar, a noisy, ceaseless drum.

The feeling can hurt so much that you vomit -- usually you do. So, he said, it's better to keep your eyes low, and head bowed, and to avoid all that these Newton sunsets have begun to stir in locals.

Still, on that street cloaked in smoky shadows, luring shivers that curl into bone marrow, the sky seems to end, and everything goes deafeningly quiet.

For those brave enough to raise their eyes,  comes that crashing weight of loss, the guilt, the "if only I had known"s, the "I could've stopped it"s, and a stalemate of stares with the house at the end of the street.

The house at the end of the street.

Overgrown grass and exposed red brick. Thick bushes full of fuchsia blossoms. A flat roof and two-car garage. Yellow caution tape.

It's funny how quickly a neighborhood turns lavendar.

It's almost like glass breaking.

The way a quaint blue town begins to bleed with its secrets, how the cul-de-sacs start to pull apart, and the sidewalks begin to crack.

The air grows hot with the things left unsaid, and the crowded neighbors that once felt like safety suddenly become claustrophobic.

It almost makes it worse.

Because the Johnsons knew the Kincaids walking schedule, and the Fosters leave their kids with the Chopras every third Wednesday, and Mr. Matt leads an afternoon swim class at the local YMCA, and Mrs Sofia bakes bread and cookies for the town, you just have to stop by before 11 am, and Dale and Joanna are new, but intensely active with neighborhood watch, and the day before the block had grilled and lit fireworks, and everyone loved Andrew, so how...

The house looks so cold and alone in the quiet.

Had it always looked like this?

Maybe the silence is because the immediate neighbors had begun to move. Uprooting their manicured lawns, the chalk covered sidewalks, and lemonade stands. None of it really mattered, anyway.

Because something had been amiss, and they hadn't noticed.

Something unimaginable.

How could they not have noticed?

Now they all felt like bad actors. A small town going through the motions, the mornings and the evenings, the platitudes and trivalties, the things they'd ignored to "keep the peace", pretended not to see -- perhaps they were running out of people to blame.

No one would ever feel that warmth again.

The glass had broken, and so, the community followed suit.

Behind that pitiful house, the clouds stained red and purple, but I still remember when the sky was blue.

Someone puts flowers in the mailbox.

But perhaps it was just the tint of lavendar, and they were really just weeds all along.