It’s just us; my brother, sister, and I. We commune around the blackened cinder-block fireplace; my sister, brother, and I. The fourth heathen, asleep in her bed and dreaming still, of things nobody cares to remember. For it is early morning, on a summer day in a month I wish I had cared to remembered. It’s that transition time when the dew still rides the delicate blades of grass, not yet taken by the sun, and the swings are all still and it is just us. My brother, sister, and me.

I watch in sheer amazement, the way all humans do when toying with a thing of destruction, as the match my brother holds in his boney hand catches. The lonesome flame dances for a moment, a moment in which I am transfixed; but then it takes a quivering breath and it wavers, then extinguishes itself. There was some untimely beauty in its self destruction. My brother takes another match, drags it hard against the red box's side. Daring this time around, he quickly swiped his hand through the flame; once, twice. Until the miniature blaze devoured itself, at which point he dropped it into the graveyard or charred splinters before him. Behind his eyes he saw his hand hovering above the small inferno. He was invincible. He was immortal. He lit another match.