The District Burns Alone Tonight

The sent of smoke from a commercial fire fills the air outside my window tonight and if I close my eyes I am back home driving from school with the placid Sound to my left towards the smell of burning camp fires just right of the entrance to Dash Point Beach to meet my friends, or it's that summer night we come to the beach too late thinking the park remains open because the gate is still open and then we see the fire trucks and we stand stunned watching the blaze and when they catch us we lie and say we came looking for a ring I lost that day in the sand, or maybe I am back sitting on the deck of Lizz's beach house that 4th of July throwing M-80s and 100s into the water and covering ourselves in their wet explosions when, stoned, we call the police to report that the neighbor's beach house is on fire only to realize (after the fire department arrived) that it's only a bon fire and so now I miss the scent of the Sound, I miss the salt and breeze, and today I asked Shelley if, being from the same sort of Washington town, she missed this too, and of course she did, because the Sound, the Sound is in our blood, and I miss that part of the night when the Sound called and I swam out in search of that point where the moonlight hit the water where Kara saw us once where he took me once where there was a way to wash the scent away.