Outside of our place, we burn a book on marriage.  The counselor we are now seeing recommended it, and so we take a stove pot and place it outside and put the book into it and light it on fire while we smoke cigarettes. 

At first the pages do not catch. I spread them with a stick and let the fire go from page to page.  I light another match and set a second set of pages on fire.  We bundle against the cold and watch them burn, the underlined and dog-earred and highlighted, into ash and the December sky.

"Do you think someone will see?" She asks.

"It's late," I say.

 ***

  In Valencia, Spain I sit in the stands at the plaza de toros and watch the capeadores.  The men are young boys, and each takes his turn drawing the beast, first toward one, then toward the other.  They gather information.  What side the bull favors.  The signs of the charge.  His level of aggression.    They will be matadors someday.

 When the picadores emerge the crowd is larger.  It is the day's second bullfight and the sun is setting against the gold and red.  This is years ago, a boy myself.

 It is the job of picadores to lance the neck muscles of the bull.  It is a slow process, but the bull is scared now.  The presence of the horses.  The men on horseback.  Their spears.  His first charge is at the picador in the far corner and he angles under the horses' belly and lifts the creature off its front haunches, armor and all.  The picador poises, draws, shoots.  The bull drops his neck.  It is a clean shot.  The bull retreats.  The crowd cheers.  

 ***

It is the week before I leave Baghdad.  In my hand I have a box of letters from friends, family and courteous strangers that write unknown soldiers in Iraq.  

Deploying and redeploying is a matter of space and priority.  My footlocker is packed inside my CHU and there is no more space.  Tomorrow I will take it to the Post Office and send it home, the trinkets I have collected that the Army will not send back for me: books from home, letters from her, DVDs pirated from foreign lands, photos from the soldiers I will not see again.  What cannot be packed must be burned. 

***

 The counselor says the book is useless.  Books are not useless, but this one is.  He says it has done more damage because of the expectation it creates and that we should burn it.  He seems to enjoy the prospect of the symbolism, and at the end of our first session he gives me his own book to read.  

We watch the fire.  Thin embers float up into the night and wafe in circles against the curb. 

"Maybe we should divorce," she says. 

"Maybe," I say. 

"I'm tired," she says. 

"I know," I say. 

We do not believe the counselor.  Perhaps it is a crisis of faith.  Faith in books.  Faith in counselors, in John, in the survivors of the Nam who speak in abstracts like poison and intimacy but cannot convey a touchless touch or the silence in her eyes, and in mine, too.  We do not believe him, and so we burn his book, too.  

 ***

They are called burn barrels.  They are oil barrels made of melted steel that have burned so hot and for so long holes have melted into the sides and white ash surrounds them.  Soldiers on burn duty have red eyes and white boots from the fine soot.  They burn classified material.  They burn trash.  They burn shit.  In the embers are melted things that would not burn, lumps of computer hardware and strange plastics, things that cannot burn. 

The first letter I burn is a Christmas letter from my mother.  It is a letter about their Thanksgiving and the new child in the family and their own Christmas plans and how our neighbor back home had to sell his cattle because the costs were too high and the market too tough, but how he expects to buy them back next year.  She thanks me for my service and asks that I stay safe and says she is proud of me and I can hear the words as I read them.

I light the tip of the envelope where I had opened it and the paper ignites, carrying the flame upward, trading pulp for light and energy and then ash.  It is the chemistry of combustion, and it transforms the ink to vapor.  I add letters.  Then more.  Then the box itself.  

***

By the time the matador arrives the sun has almost set.  I can see wet blood on the bull's smooth coat of hair.  The banderillero has put the spears into the bull's back and their bright colors swing wildly as he paces. 

The bull's chest heaves with oxygen when he breathes.  He trots the perimeter of the ring.  His eyes are wild. and one woman from the crowd throws up her hands and shakes her body and the bull charges.  He rams the wall and stumbles back and the woman laughs.  

They cheer with the arrival of the matador, a thin man dressed in sequins of purple and gold, his face palid and clothes tailored so that all can see his careful movements.  He drops his hat, and the fight commences. 

It is the night of las fallas festival in Valencia.  Pyres of the grandest collages of the past year will be set to flame at midnight. In the dark we crowd into the town squares where the effigies stand.  We drink sangria.  We smoke.  We huddle in the cold March night.  

The matador pirrouettes the bull, drawing him first to his left side, then to his right.  He puts his back to the creature.  He draws him closer and escapes charges.  When the crowd is tired, he draws the sword from the cape.  The bull is ready. 

***

I pour water into the pot and the flame disappears into steam and smoke, the leftover pages charred and stained with wet ash.  I carry the pot to the corner and pour the smokey water down the storm drain, pages and all.  My clothes absorb the smoke and for a minute I think of camping trips in the West, and when I turn back I see I am not there.  I am in this city on this street and this aparment, but I am not there either.  I put my arm around her and we go inside. 

"I'm cold," she says. 

"I know," I say. 

***

The kill is not a swift one. The matador is one of the best but his first strike misses the nerve and the bull stumbles onto his front knees, recovers, and then charges again, more clumsily this time.  At the second stab the crowd shouts ole, but the sword strikes bone and does not penetrate.  At the third pass the crowd is calmer until the matador raises his arm high. 

The blow is quick with the bull only inches from the man.  The sword enters up to its hilt.  The bull collapses.  The bull breathes in shallow breaths.  He tries to stand but he cannot.  His eyes speak panic, but he is paralyzed. As the blood runs its final course the panic remains in his eye, but there is no more breathing.  The bull is dead.  The crowd waves white handkerchiefs. 

At midnight the city burns.  There is little cheering as the sculptures melt into brilliant mad flames.  We simply watch the fires consume the art so that the ash may be spread to birth new art, and new art again.  The heat is unbearable up close, but when the bonfire collapses to embers the coldness returns and the flame is missed, the night blacker than before to our unadjusted eyes, stinging and tired and looking for the way home.