Bonfire Monument

Over the years, Texas A&M bonfires rounded up Aggies in town like a home-cooked Thanksgiving. Around Novembers, it was their birthright to create another golden Mona Lisa from scratch and stack it 4 stories tall, in a breathless spiraling cake of timber that drew awe-struck crowds like moths towards a flame; a triumph that towered a radius of 25 miles for 90 years. But, it is far more compelling to exhibit an art that cries for young lives lost in tragedy. I paid my respects, left money to rest among the other coins laid on top of a gray marker fixed squarely on their heartache. And I felt like a part of the maroon inner-circle, swallowed by a somber round of 12 perfect standing rectangles that loomed like open doorways, marking each of the victim’s lives, all gone; yet all leaving behind distinct caskets of long afternoon shadows over the grass.