The wooden beams crackled and crumbled. Ashes puddled under remnants struggling to survive, to make it into another life. Paintings and photographs balled up from the heat until they were no longer visible, sacrificing themselves for a poetic end just like art should. We stood at a distance far enough to watch in grief and horror but close enough to feel comforted by the radiating warmth. The flames started to look liquid to my aching eyes. They started to sing. It sounded deep like water and echoed like the world was an empty cavern waiting to hold its melodies. I started rushing to it, pulled in by a current. I think people yelled to me, probably begging me to stop acting insane because someone like me shouldn’t be ruined by grief, but really I had already forgotten about the shocking pain. I was floating. I stuck my hand in the vibrant colors and danced with them. I was buoyant, how could I not dance in it? I feel like drowning in a symphony of scorching colors, listening to a rhapsody of divine nonsense. Maybe this will purify me, renew me, revive me, like the celestial realm preaches. Or maybe it will kill me, drowning in a sea of gaseous compounds that dissolve me before I reach the bottom. But in this moment, I am dancing. I am enraptured and free and so alive. The house dances with me in a pas de deux that pushes me out of the dimming world I fell in love with and I emerge like glowing metal, a sword that has just become a new, more advanced weapon. This house was a sacrifice for my temple, and God set the altar aflame like those ancient peoples begged Him to do. I have been anything but killed. Truly I am refreshed, and now I may finally live.