Fire has always been the same, whisking upward in licks of the universal soul. Man crouched around it, clad in God’s instruments, staring inward at carbon the same size and radiation as his own. We warmed our hands starting at the palms as the straight folks bedded down in the expanse of the shut down town, us keeping vigil over the night, for if nothing happens it is only because no one watched. Darlene wet at the cheeks from a cry: she had felt as I have done my best to keep from feeling that the relentless search is not for novelty, but for a place to settle the feet, feel unset-upon, breathe air that you know something about. Which is why we made the fire, ragged stereotypes pitching trash and wood chips into an old barrel, and the rest of us began to wander in from the slowly dying city. Putting themselves down on grass, watching as we did the unsure flight of refuse through the moist air until the fire was certain in its sustenance, and no one could claim that there was anything further to do. In the flickering light Darlene’s tears dried. The others said nothing, arms coupled around their knees. The fire spoke plenty, and it said the thing it always says, transient as it may be when every flame bespeaks the destruction of what sustains it. You are home, the fire said. And we believed it then.