We stood at least 15, maybe 20 feet away from the flames. Yet it flung heat at us without trying. Hot on our faces, on the leather of our coats, on the woven threads in our blue jeans. The rubber in our shoes braced itself, ready in case it were forced, by the heat, to changed its shape.
It lit up the face of a girl, brown hair around her face, a hot dog bun at her lips. It coated a triangle of inky sky, and spilled all its steamy orange glow onto strangers in the blackness.
In its core, the embers. Once wood, now lifting and drifting, soft, dusty, as if it were only newsprint. In as much as it might have been the news of the day, burnt and gone and nothing left to hold but charred ash, muddied by the morning dew and, then, washed away in the rain.
The fire danced and all the people, in this triangle green, boxed in by house-boxes, cut into apartment-boxes, raised their eyes up at the sky.
The night burst with light. Pops, fizzles, squeals, bangs, and the oohhs of breath, holding it all up.
The fire burned on. He and I came and we watched it sway and swirl… a dance of the seven veils, diminishing.
On bonfire night, light licks itself out. Autumn sputters, claps and finally, is quiet.
The wind agreed, reluctantly, to bear all the smoke away. 
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