The fire consumes wood like a hungry bear awakened from hibernation. The intensity of the heat causes me to recoil from its scorching anger. A crackle and pop break the evening silence; the ravenous inferno finds sustenance in its path. Room to room, floor to floor—nothing—and no one—is safe from its destruction. My wife, kneeling in the front yard of the home where we reared our children, watches history reduced to a pile of rubble and ash. I wipe tears from her cheeks and wrap her in my embrace, trying to remember when the kids visited last.
B.G. Smith 