10x100's - Fire

As promised. One theme, ten stories, each 100 words or less.

“If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.” ― Toni Morrison, Beloved

I. Journal Burning

It was vital, like an organ. My possession of it as young as the pink sparkles that once bled from the gel pen onto the stenciled paper. I won’t let them hurt you anymore, I whispered down the spine and built a fire. Still bound, the pages danced their youthful expressions. What are we doing? They asked, doe-eyed and unsuspecting. I tugged each tooth free of the twin-loop spiral coil with conviction to cremate the pernicious havoc I’d wreaked, setting sentence after sentence free. Meanwhile, beside the fire, the earth bore the weight of a true relic’s inherence.

II. Fire Ants

They traverse the log on their miniature speedways. I fidget at the memory of their bite. More than once, I’d snuffed them out, arrogant to the insignificant crumb that was their life’s work. What remains is charcoal and what appears to be the debris of an abandoned personal cannery, the jagged graveyard catching flashes of blinding sun. Life is coursing through the wreckage, disrupting its relentless inclination to die. Which is different from surrender. I invite the legs and feelers onto the swirl of the tip of my finger and watch as they forge a new path.

III. Tea towel

The tea towel caught the burner and ignited into flames, dangerously close to the little blue curtains that hung over the radiator spewing erratic sizzles and pops. There’s a room full of cacti. Pained eyes in the doorway. The lamp will not stop its flicker. The well water tastes of metal and when I wash the dishes it burns the shit out of my hands. I find solace in the property’s perimeter, taking note of the Pyrophilic neighbor, a Douglas Fur, across the street. That farm house could kindle magnificence, I imagine him yearning, licking his ravenous lips.

IV. Bonfires

The hole in the chair widens against my weight. The heat has me looking for useless solutions like sunscreen or a cap. But it’s nighttime and cloudy so I press cool palms onto my angry cheeks. The kids drop marshmallows that burn to a crisp and ooze into a nightmare. Sugar gone wrong. They are barefoot, free, dirty and wild. We are in the wake of things. Death and love and conflict and imperfections and maybe some truths not yet spoken. Community is as much a gamble as it is a gift, hearts beholden to ambiguous destinations.

V. Cinema

At thirteen, you see Titanic three times and keep the stubs in a shoebox. Armageddon too. You see that one twice. You walk the path of the animal cracker toward the rim of her panties. Marvel at bare breasts and wonder if anyone will ever look at you that way. Draw the goddamn masterpiece that you are. And the hand. You sear that hand dripping down the fogged window into your brain. You don’t even know yet all the ways in which there are to make love. You close the lid, hide the evidence, and later burn it in effigy.

VI. Krakow

The pirogies in Rynek Główny Square, were sticky, puffed, and plated meticulously beside a Polish pint. The piles of moldy shoes on the other hand were dismal and suffocating. The artificial limbs, their odd angles detached from bodies and time, evinced their devastation through the display glass. We stood at the termination of the train line where human cargo culminated, looking down the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I couldn’t inhale through my nose. I feared there would be a lingering stench of ancestral human smoke. I stabbed the potato pillow with my fork, sipped my sour beer and ate in fortunate silence.

Photo by Victor Malyushev on Unsplash

VII. Fever Dream

It was his fever not mine. He woke me every sleep cycle unearthing rich subconscious treasures. We circled. The matriarch of my bloodline across from me. Her skin papery and translucent, hair a pile of wires on her head. I rubbed tender circles around my chest. With authority she declared: Never work your heart so hard. It punched my gut. Could she see all the times I had fallen in love? Her breastbone was a mirror of armored, knitted mesh, our breathe stuck together in stitches. I inhaled. She stilled. Her reflection a living corpse.

VIII. Ring of Fire

The burn seared the stretching skin around his descending crown, the fact of his advancing exit a relief. The midwife made room for him and I think of the way I’d dip my finger in water and caress the rim of the Passover goblets. The crystal ones. So fancy. The hum settling somewhere inside and radiating out, instead of the other way around. There’s nothing oppressive happening here, just an animal giving birth to an animal. The power of it incites indelible love into repairable wounds. But I cannot seem to track down the origins of the flame.

Photo by Luke Besley on Unsplash

IX. Another One Bites The Dust

He didn’t want to but I begged him. He swam out and grabbed me. Splashed me. Dripping wet, I dressed in his sweatshirt. He climbed up underneath to warm his face on my skin. It ended as they all did, in young devastation and it slapped me, the idea that my past might rust forever in a jar. Or corrode my potential and haunt dusty corners in my beautiful home. Exhausted by this frangible dance I fed it to the fire. Not even page by page this time. The whole mass at once, a lump too hot to swallow.

X. Earth

I used to think the bounty was in the harvest but I have become a woman infatuated with weeds. Under the soil, where it is warmer than the day, I follow a thread looking for reason but only finding a rhyme. The bed is clean and ripe for sowing but I trusted it more when I thought it all dead. There are splinters in my hand and I’m scared of the future. I stoke the earth like a hot bed of coals, every particle it seems in corresponding conversation. While I am but a budding friend waiting by the wall.

Photo by Sinem Göçtü on Unsplash

As always in gratitude,

Becca