West Seattle in the eighties—
a crooked kingdom of rain-slick streets,
where the nights could swallow you whole.
We learned young to walk quick,
to glance over our shoulders
and never let the streetlights catch us standing still.
The world was sharp-edged,
a place where whispers carried real weight,
where kids vanished like smoke,
and the grown-ups spoke of it only
in half sentences.
But come dusk—
when the Puget Sound exhaled its salt breath
and the gulls screamed their way home—
we’d slip toward Alki,
drawn by the flicker on the horizon,
those first tongues of flame
licking up from driftwood altars.
The air changed there.
The danger dimmed,
like a radio turned low.
You could smell everything at once—
brine, gasoline, cedar sap,
the faint perfume of cheap beer and sweat.
Bonfires lined the beach
like a row of wild little suns,
each one a heartbeat,
each one a promise that for now,
we were safe.
Someone always brought a boom box,
its tinny speakers coughing out
Def Leppard or Nirvana,
depending on who got there first.
Voices rose and cracked,
half in laughter, half in survival.
We danced barefoot in the cool sand,
shadows leaping huge and monstrous
against the dunes—
a theater of ghosts made harmless by firelight.
The flames were tall as dreams.
They leaned and hissed,
turning our faces amber and holy.
We built them high enough to touch the night,
to keep the darkness guessing.
They were our temples,
built of nothing but driftwood and defiance.
Every crack and spark
was an act of faith that we might live
to see another morning.
And oh, how the Sound glimmered then—
black glass stretching forever,
waves whispering secrets to the shore.
You could almost believe
the world was kind
when the laughter hit just right,
when someone threw a stick into the flames
and the sparks shot upward like prayers.
But the night always leaned closer,
listening.
Beyond the reach of the fire,
the city waited—
cold, watchful, patient.
We knew it would take again.
It always did.
Still, we stayed until the embers
were nothing but red eyes in the sand.
We stayed until the music warped and died,
until the fire burned out of us too.
And when we finally turned home,
the smoke clung to our clothes,
to our hair, to our hearts—
that stubborn scent of safety,
fleeting, impossible,
but real enough
to get us through another day.
Now, years later—
I stand where the fires once lived,
watching joggers and strollers
cross the quiet beach where we once howled at gods.
The air smells cleaner,
emptier somehow.
No laughter, no defiance—
just the hush of tide and the faint hum
of a safer city.
I trace the horizon,
trying to remember the faces
of those who didn’t make it through.
Their laughter comes back in flashes—
like the spark when a match flares too fast,
then disappears.
Sometimes I wonder
why I’m still here,
why the city spared me
when it didn’t spare them.
Survival feels small now—
smaller than the flames that once
seemed to reach the stars.
Back then, we were giants
standing in the glow,
burning just to prove we could.
Now I feel like one of the ashes,
wind-scattered and quiet,
but still warm.
I breathe in the salt and the smoke
that isn’t really there,
and I think—
maybe this is what victory looks like:
not glory,
not joy,
but the slow astonishment
of still breathing
in a world
that once tried so hard
to put you out.