LJ Idol Week 19 - Kindling
The match trembles in my fingers when I strike it, the exertion-shake of muscles well-exercised, perhaps over-exercised, the result of wholesome, strenuous activity. I smell like freshly cut wood, like turned earth and flame-colored leaves, like the cool ozone of fog and the ripe fragrance of caved-in jack-o-lanterns, like sea salt and sweat. It’s a whole smell, if such a thing exists, something that forms a backdrop in the still air around me as I lower the match to the twists of paper inserted between the shards of dry wood. As the flame licks at the blue and violet stationary I can see her words twist and curl, the I love you’s and I miss you’s arching into pugilistic contractions before vanishing into the heat and ash.
It’s a rewarding sight, a cathartic sight, one that dulls the ache in my overused muscles. I haven’t chopped wood since my summers with my grandparents and my body was sorely unprepared for the task. The skin is raw on my palms at the base of my fingers, the flesh wet and shining as it weeps. I pat them against my dusty jeans every few seconds, enjoying the way the grated nerves sing, and watch the flames grow until they’re large and strong enough to caress the kindling, to wrap around the anxious strokes of my axe through luscious lumber and devour it with the sort of hunger that only fire possesses. It reminds me of her, of her fingernails in my skin and her teeth at my neck, of the desperate possessiveness that she only ever displayed through touch, the clutch and grab of her desire, the ownership of my body left in crescent-moon punctures and careful bruises just brushing the edge of my collars.
The heat makes my cheeks tingle, and I scuttle backward a foot or so with my knees creaking in quiet protest.
The sleeve of the sweater she left in my car on our first date goes next, igniting in a ripple of pilly fleece. The white was already a mute grey after years of constant love and wear, even though the sleeves were too short on me and the zipper always caught a few inches from the bottom, even though her scent faded after the first wash no matter how I tried to convince myself it was still there. The zipper gleams in the light as the fabric melts and drips around it, the smoke acrid enough to make my eyes sting and water. I swipe the heel of my hand, hard, against the tears.
The books are next, pages fluttering like wounded birds, plasticized dust jackets crinkling and melting into a tarry black nothing. For a moment they look to be edged in gold leaf, every page gleaming along its border before they are rapidly consumed, words and sentences and paragraphs vanishing from the stories that we shared such a love for, adventures and romances and tragedies that we shared between us. Her favorite is the last, stacked high on the pile, the only one I considered saving. I close my eyes and count to fifty before I look again, to be sure it is well beyond rescue. Still, my fingers twitch and dig at my shirt.
It grows and grows, this fire that was my afternoon’s work, this proud creation that chews greedily at the feast it’s been offered, until it spills from the small pile of wood and belongings and begins inching across the mantle, following the trail of letters and printed emails and packing slips from gifts that would arrive unannounced on my doorstep. I’d saved everything, every scrap of evidence I could cling to that proved she loved me.
The flames find the splintered legs of the dining room table, the coffee table, the wooden headboard from my bed. The latter had been the hardest to split apart, all solid oak and thick as my wrist. By the time it licks the walls of the living room as if testing the resiliency of this new obstacle, the heat is nearly unbearable. But the fire is hypnotic and I want to savor the strength I gave it, the power to eradicate my entire life in one fell swoop. I want to bask in the light of the only permanent, definitive choice I have ever made.
My leg brushes her elbow as I make my way to the door, and for a moment our eyes lock, mine filled with smoke-tears and hers with real ones, her face red and streaked around the edges of the duct tape fastened over her mouth. She’d been quiet for several hours while I laid waste to the furniture, but now she thrashes in the chair, her arms and wrists chafing against her restraints until blood stains the zip ties and rope, her jaw working furiously beneath the tape as she tries to speak. I cup her chin in my hand and I can feel her fight the recoil of her muscles, how she twitches like a live wire in my grip. I lean down and kiss the tape where her lips would be, imagining their softness, the gentle glaze of her chapstick.
By the time my fingers insert the key into the ignition of my car, the shakes have vanished entirely.