As we recline on the roof of this borrowed car, our skin lies as canvas to the paint of the ethereal midnight blanket of wonders stitching our shadows together. Our presence in this absence of light disrupts the branches swaying to the incessant beating of our young breaths. Overlooking the restless city from this balcony of dirt and dreamy musings, we imagine ourselves as lighthouses of warmth illuminating the streets, skyscrapers, and solemnity. You extend your fingers to deconstruct everything lying before us. I extend mine into the pockets of my jacket that you tore two weeks ago. That was the Monday we decided we would desert all that we knew, to deconstruct the threads of our current stories into a new mess of intertwined adventures into uncertainty. For now, we are cradled by the stillness surrounding us. Soon, our bodies will become glaciers that will fully dissipate when the familiar morning emerges out of the torn pockets of horizon. When my eyes return to you, a lighter already indents the palm of your right hand. If fire was sound, our bodies would scream at the spark of our own realities. Your arm interlocking with mine, you toss the lighter, enkindling the car in hazardous waves of artificial sunrise, a beacon for the runaways of this aging night. Steadying ourselves for the run to the train station, we look ahead, away from our past selves we incinerated, from the histories, the places, the people caught up in the wildfires we instigated within the forests of our own selfishness. Maybe pieces of ourselves are drinking interior thoughts to control the flames of ardent sorrows. We were walking phoenixes, trying to avoid the ignition that would melt our own existences until we desired to start anew. -JP Legarte