It was on the last night of a labyrinthine year that I think I really lived for the first time.

That night there was a goddess,
wearing a denim cap straight over her hijab
And there was my queen,
The space captain of my idolatry,
With song lyrics puffy painted onto her t-shirt.
The three of us
at the little yellow house on sycamore terrace.

It was the night we burned our year
The fallout of heartbreak
and mistake
Dusting our eyelashes like acid rain snowflakes

I’d met her, Kiran, the October before.
Fresh from Pakistan,
she was starting her eighth grade year at my school
a small city reeking of Axe body spray,
testosterone,
and gallons upon gallons of pitch-black fear, leaking from every wall.
Of course,
I welcomed her to hell.
The most beautiful person I’d ever met, and I got to be the one to welcome her.

It was an honour like no other.

The first time I heard Kiran speak more than a word, more than her name,
was a graded speech.
(this was debate class, you see.)
I thought she’d be quiet--
a mouse in the portable destined to join the cockroaches sitting in the back--
But I was ingloriously wrong.
Kiran was poised and brilliant, unwavering and strong.

Evidently, I was infatuated.

And the other girl,
an enigma called Isa.
I met her while waiting for the bus to sweep up the team after an After-School Tournament.
She was a shadow in patent leather heels,
telling me her heart as if I was deserving of it.

It was under yellow-cast flourescent lights that I had my first conversation with Isa.
I don’t remember who started it or how,
But I know that by the end of maybe forty-five minutes I was veiled in the feeling that something capital-b Big was about to happen,
like I was on the cusp of something that truly mattered.
After 45 minutes,
I knew that she had two little brothers for whom she’d do anything under the stars.
After 45 minutes,
I knew that she was Columbian and proud of it,
that she could analyze a political scene like a Renaissance painting,
and that she was beautiful as all the stars.
But what does that even matter?
What does anything else in the world matter when you’ve just met someone like her?

That year was the longest, loudest, least palatable of my life so far
I was drowning, maybe,
But damn it all if I wasn’t the luckiest person alive.
Because I--
of all people, I!--
got to be friends with Kiran and Isa.

Being so, it was only natural for us to do something memorable to punctuate our year.

I invited twelve people to the pyroromantic shindig,

and only they showed up--
a good omen if I’ve ever seen one.
We played Halsey, Hamilton, and odd, lofi, reggaeton
Kiran met my dog,
and I met my earthly reward.
It was serene.

And then a spark,
a woosh,
a crackle. There was light and it was good.

We put our schoolwork in the flames, watching the edges of the paper curl and blacken.
It was an unseasonably cool night,
nothing left for the air to digest after all the rain from the week before
So much rain that the town drowned,
So much rain that dollhouse suburbia had turned into Waterworld.
The night before, I’d swam in the streets with another enigma,
her,
but I digress.

Kiran, Isa, and I danced that night.
Feeling the air, the ashen “Florida snow.”
We made promises,
held hands.
She said my fingers were spiderlike and I believed her.

On Isa’s shirt collar,
she’d written “wake up kids, we’ve got the dreamer’s disease.”
(another song lyric.)
That night I was sure that I didn’t want to wake up,
ever,
And so I asked the cosmos if that was okay.
She was right there, right above us that night,
So I could hear her loud and clear when she said “maybe.”

As of today,
the fifteenth of May, 2018,
the next bonfire is in just a penny over a week.

Oh, my loves,
I am ready.