I stood wedged against Mark and Diane, among the countless people in the street. My candle was flickering in the breeze, and since I'd forgotten to grab one of those little collars for the candle, the melting wax was dripping on my hand. Luckily, it felt more pleasant that painful.

It was the third night. We were all committed to having these candlelight vigils every single night until it was over. The first night had been the most difficult. The sadness, frustration and even anger flavored the air all around us, and the police were nervous. They had tried to start to corral us, but then somehow we all just sat down on the street, or on the sidewalks, and they couldn't do anything with thousands of people just sitting on the ground. It was sunrise before we stood up and went home.

I think some of them were probably at their wits end. Truthfully, we weren't even especially interested in what they did or said. We'd mostly sort of blocked them out and ignored them. Mark thought made them a lot more angry than they would have been otherwise.

In the far side of the crowd, someone began to sing. It wasn't a song I knew, but it had a familiar sense to it, but I didn't understand the words – it wasn't in English. In fact, it wasn't in any language I'd ever heard. Slowly, the song spread. The words were somehow easy to remember, even though they were completely unfamiliar.

We were pretty close to the line of police. They were in full riot gear – helmets, shields and armor, many were sporting those new rifles that didn't use bullets but were just as deadly. As the song spread, the police moved back – almost as if the song was repelling them, somehow.

Eventually, we all were singing. The song got louder, and the breeze stopped. Then it felt like everything stopped. The candle wax stopped melting, all other sounds beside the song went silent. I could no longer hear any helicopters in the air, and the radios of the police had gone silent.

Once I had started singing, it felt as if there was no way I could stop. My own croaky, unstable voice seemed to be adding to everyone else's voice, to create a wall of sound. I started to see some of the police drop their weapons and shields, take off their helmets, and start to sing. As that happened others of them moved away from those singing. The line of police broke apart as some started to sing, and some moved away.

Eventually, I saw that all of the police had finally dropped everything, and started to sing. As they sung, the crowd moved out toward them, so that they were just part of the crowd of us.

After about three hours, the song died down, and it was quiet. I could think of nothing to do but go home, and it seemed that Mark and Diane wanted to go home too. We found the others from our house, and started the long walk home.

The next morning, Mark knocked on my door, and told me it was over.