Monologue of a Homecoming Bonfire Chair

A bonfire is an engine of destruction. Architecture and chemistry combined, ravenous for a spark so they might eat away at everything around them, licking and swallowing and always hungry for more. I took this position because somebody needed to, but I take no pleasure in it. I see victims in my dreams, those few that might step too close to the blaze and be subsumed into the mass of fuel. 

As the first-years slave away on the construction of the glorious mechanism, I have to scoff. They have no idea the potency that lies within that scaffolding, they can only imagine the roaring conflagration that will soon be surging from the space they stand on. They just build up and up, creating future ruination beam by wretched beam. They look at me oddly when I try to tell them to be more cautious, when I tell them that with the completion of this device, we are become death, destroyer of worlds. At first it’s just a single first-year that touches the flame in jest, but I see visions of more, of the Green seared and blackened, students and alumni reduced to bones by my creation. A vision of myself as the great destroyer.

And yet… when I see the glory of my work, the scientific wonder at play… I can’t help but feel amazed. The radiance of a thousand suns created through my mortal hands alone… the sensation is dangerous but addictive. I hold the power to burn countless innocents, to raze farm and field, all with a single match. The clock is counting down. Even when I’m not looking at the date and time, I hear the steady tick ringing in my ears. A clicking overture to destruction, to infernal carnage, to guilt and pain and a blinding red and white that I know will never leave my memory.

I can only pray that after the torching and the screaming die down, we’re able to best Columbia. 

—CJ ’26