We Built a Bonfire (A Poem I Wrote)

We built a bonfire
From scrapbooks and old polaroids
From cassettes and video tapes
From Halloween costumes and Christmas trees
We built a bonfire
From summers full of cheap beers and wine coolers
Summers of sitting on the hoods of old Toyotas
Smoking weed
Not cool enough to know better
Not smart enough to care
Watching the sun set
Watching the sun rise, joggers passing the diners in the early morning
We built a bonfire
And the smoke curled up to a sky slit open by clouds
A sky that opened up its guts and poured
on soccer games and school plays
on a first kiss and a broken heart
on a first time, stifling noises, clumsy and afraid
we built a bonfire
and it roared and hissed and kissed at our hands and feet
and we flew kites, and warmed cold hands with our breath,
and coughed from the smoke that filled our lungs
we built a bonfire
watched it burn
until it was gone
and the embers swirled through the evening air to land on the earth
and were extinguished