I wrote this for my writer's group. I'm not totally sure what it is. And I think I'm missing a paragraph at the end, but oh well.

Dawn comes on, unstoppably hopeful, over the city skyline and slices smog with rays only hazy around the very edges. Their optimistic sharpness is finally thwarted by a thousandth, millionth attempt at control: pulled curtains. They gather the sunlight and hold it, embrace it far too close, to smother. Their flipside, drearier, looks into the wire-choked, tastefully painted bedchambers of American youth herself. She sleeps, fresh to the eye even after so many hours of open-mouthed breathing and sighing, with her stomach down and her head to the side and her nurtured hair spilled around her. Peace draws a wistful finger lightly across her slack lips, cups her full cheek in his palm. She exhales her sleep steadily, with leisure, safe and assured in her room.

In her golden sleep, she registered unconsciously the clockwork, the rhythmically repeated movement so regular she thought of it (unconsciously) as constant. Ticking slightly faster than by the second and making great progress: delicate metal rods rotated smoothly, interlocked wheels pushed one another around and around, recording. And so slowly, with calculated slowness, up and up fire wound, sending out small sparks like static and burning away the cord. All of this in the sunlight, the new, stinging sunlight that bounced off metal components of the bomb and glared at the only obstruction between them and the natural life, the natural mechanics of the human body. The curtain. It hung, unmoving and heavy in comparison to the busybody bomb so hear it. It hung and x-ray like antishadows, light, danced behind it as the fuse fell away, to ash, and time ran swiftly out.