So, against our better judgement 
we made  bond fire in the living room.

I know it's July but
something felt too cold
and I got desperate. It was
the air conditioner I know--
that metallic breeze that made my throat feel
like stale scrambled eggs
and my knuckles crinkle again like
February-- and I hate February.
I want to be covered in the thing
residue of a Pennsylvania summer that
wraps your wrists in that clear
tape film-- that humidity--
that dizzy spiraling euphoric
heat-- the kind that makes
you want to kiss trees. I've
kissed trees in the heat and
walked on the double yellow
lines to the reality that radiates
from the wobble-lines 
on an asphalt horizon-- I want
to day dream-- heat dream
and so the storm was cruel to us.
We looked out the windows 
and felt cold-- unnaturally cold.
I made the first move and took
the empty pictures frames and broke
them for kindling-- struck the 
matches I was saving for
candles and for praying to 
pictures of Mary on my desk--
I said that we had to decide then 
and there if we were going to do it--
if we needed the heat that badly
and no one objected-- maybe they
were scared of me-- scared of what
the cold does to me-- makes me 
desperate as a copperhead-- as a corn snake
waiting for their blood to freeze solid
like a blue raspberry Popsicle--
And I wanted to makes it before
the thunder turned out
the lights and made us feel guilty
for stealing fire from the Gods in
the first place. We took
only the useless things. We saved
the books even though we all wanted
to see their pages raptured by fire--
we burned coupons and shoe laces
and laptops and the cord that connects
the television to the DVD player--
burned umbrellas and Styrofoam 
(even though we knew that it's
supposed to give you cancer-- we
were already sick from the cold 
waiting heavy in our pores).
Feeling free of something once the flames
took we smiled-- dizzy and hallucinative
that we had made our own sun finally
and that the thunder could
not shake us and the air conditioning could 
no longer confine us to blanket cocoons.
We traded stories about August
and ate only marshmallows for dinner.
When morning came no one missed
the empty picture frames.
We only missed the heat
that we could only still feel in
the cooling ash in the middle
of our scorched carpet.