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Licking Flames
13 years ago
(Cross-posted from LJ)
I light a candle early this morning just to look at the flames. I'm waiting for the doctor to call back. No work again today. Rain pelts the window as I sit in the bathroom with no lights except the candle reflected three times in three mirrors.
I am remembering the fire. Well, as I am dragging my finger through the soot of this candle, I am remembering cleaning up after the fire. Lots of aloe was used on flesh, metal scrapers on floors. I would step on a lump of hardened polyester for a few weeks after. I couldn't get them all up.
We didn't lose many things.
Of course, the quilt that his mother made for me on my last birthday had some melted spots. For decorative and comfort purposes, it's ruined; it has black, scratchy, hard borders around the burn sores. Chris still uses it now. He couldn't throw it away and run the risk of his mother possibly finding out what had happened. I think he partially uses it to punish himself for what had happened. That realization makes me wince.
Lost three feather pillows and a jersey fitted sheet. My silky comforter has some rough spots, too. The plastic lamp beside the bed... melted.
He has regrown the patch of hair on his head that burned away. I have a scar on my breast, and tiny ones on my belly that's slowly fading. I have a rumpled sense of trust now. Now, when he drinks, I can't sleep. I have to run away now even if he's just having a few at home.
All that is lucky. We're lucky it wasn't worse, right? So why am I still thinking about it?
I'm drawing a heart with the ashes and sitting here, talking about drawings with other people... suddenly I feel my eyes burn at the corners. I push the candle away so hard it goes out, in a key-lime-and-paraffin spiral of smoke rippling to the ceiling. I can see ripples of my pencil drawings, even in the dark. I close the ripples out of my eyes and guard each eye with one of my fists. I relive finding the sketchbook.
The whole place smelled of melted plastic and made my throat hurt even worse than it already had before I'd went to bed early. It was like I swallowed permanent markers. I was still panicking, but triumphant - I'd put out the fire. Me. I did. I huffed and puffed on the fire alarm to silence it. I did start to feel big and bad. Then, the corner of my eye, a faint glow and more dark smoke. One more pillow was still on fire. I picked it up (and the books under it, still smouldering) and put them in the tub, too. Put the shower on again. Ugh, I hoped the black parts would come out of the tub. If not, this was coming right out of our safety deposit. I looked at the books that were now wet and burned. Chris's Game Informer magazine fell apart, a soggy piece of periodical toast in my fingers. No big loss. I think he'd been done reading it anyway. Then I saw what else was in the pile.
"God, please, no..."
Yes. The hundred-page sketchbook floated, wrecked and pillaged, in the bathtub flotsam. I snatched it, not caring for the moment how threateningly hot it was (especially the spiral part, which burned my hand and forearm in a few places), but wanting to save the drawings. No... no no no..." I leafed through pages stuck together, big bites taken out and browned. Some pages were just gone. Some were black. I couldn't even count all 54 drawings, the water had mixed with the ashes and glued them together. I finally flipped to the last drawing. It only had one burn spot. I ripped it out of the book with surgical precision from each wire in the spiral. The empty pages were mostly unburned. At this, I may have snorted aloud.
Just a few minutes before, everything was on fire, and rushing, and urgent. Now everything was wet. I don't remember how I felt as I hung up the drawing to dry in the dining room and fetched the garbage bag. I don't remember doing that part, but I must have. I remember the wetness and the moist, poison-tasting air. Opened all the windows, my feet slow, waterlogged even though I hadn't gotten them wet. My face was wet. A tear splashed against the new hole in the flesh of my breast. I remember thinking that it should burn, but it was a small thought that quickly evaporated. I stuffed soaked pillows into my black plastic sack. Burnt feathers, now, and burnt hair, slowly started to take over, and I blew the smell out of my nostrils at the sacrifice of taking in more scratchy air through my throat.
It was gone. I don't even remember giving first aid to Chris (but I did because he was in no shape to have done it), but I remember drying out that picture and re-drawing it on printer paper. I hadn't even scanned in most of those pictures, if any. It was supposed to be a surprise. It was supposed to be a gift. It was going to be 100 pages of six-horned dragon in graphite and a few colored pencils. That book was older than... well, it's gone, now. But the wet, smouldering anger isn't.
And now I know... that's why I still think about it. I am still really very angry. Even if you boiled it down to work-hours, I'd worked on that longer and harder than anything I'd made in years and years. I'd put love into that book. I never told Chris everything we lost, just cleaned up after him and swallowed that anger down. It's been growing like a cactus inside me ever since.
What good would it do to tell him, anyway? He can't change it now. He can only change what he will do.
I could start over, be more careful this time and not leave my sketchbooks on the cushions. It's been hard for me to draw with a pencil and not taste the wet, sulky ashes, but I can heal. I will. Maybe I will draw them again.
I light a candle early this morning just to look at the flames. I'm waiting for the doctor to call back. No work again today. Rain pelts the window as I sit in the bathroom in the dawning light, the candle reflected three times in three mirrors.
I light a candle early this morning just to look at the flames. I'm waiting for the doctor to call back. No work again today. Rain pelts the window as I sit in the bathroom with no lights except the candle reflected three times in three mirrors.
I am remembering the fire. Well, as I am dragging my finger through the soot of this candle, I am remembering cleaning up after the fire. Lots of aloe was used on flesh, metal scrapers on floors. I would step on a lump of hardened polyester for a few weeks after. I couldn't get them all up.
We didn't lose many things.
Of course, the quilt that his mother made for me on my last birthday had some melted spots. For decorative and comfort purposes, it's ruined; it has black, scratchy, hard borders around the burn sores. Chris still uses it now. He couldn't throw it away and run the risk of his mother possibly finding out what had happened. I think he partially uses it to punish himself for what had happened. That realization makes me wince.
Lost three feather pillows and a jersey fitted sheet. My silky comforter has some rough spots, too. The plastic lamp beside the bed... melted.
He has regrown the patch of hair on his head that burned away. I have a scar on my breast, and tiny ones on my belly that's slowly fading. I have a rumpled sense of trust now. Now, when he drinks, I can't sleep. I have to run away now even if he's just having a few at home.
All that is lucky. We're lucky it wasn't worse, right? So why am I still thinking about it?
I'm drawing a heart with the ashes and sitting here, talking about drawings with other people... suddenly I feel my eyes burn at the corners. I push the candle away so hard it goes out, in a key-lime-and-paraffin spiral of smoke rippling to the ceiling. I can see ripples of my pencil drawings, even in the dark. I close the ripples out of my eyes and guard each eye with one of my fists. I relive finding the sketchbook.
The whole place smelled of melted plastic and made my throat hurt even worse than it already had before I'd went to bed early. It was like I swallowed permanent markers. I was still panicking, but triumphant - I'd put out the fire. Me. I did. I huffed and puffed on the fire alarm to silence it. I did start to feel big and bad. Then, the corner of my eye, a faint glow and more dark smoke. One more pillow was still on fire. I picked it up (and the books under it, still smouldering) and put them in the tub, too. Put the shower on again. Ugh, I hoped the black parts would come out of the tub. If not, this was coming right out of our safety deposit. I looked at the books that were now wet and burned. Chris's Game Informer magazine fell apart, a soggy piece of periodical toast in my fingers. No big loss. I think he'd been done reading it anyway. Then I saw what else was in the pile.
"God, please, no..."
Yes. The hundred-page sketchbook floated, wrecked and pillaged, in the bathtub flotsam. I snatched it, not caring for the moment how threateningly hot it was (especially the spiral part, which burned my hand and forearm in a few places), but wanting to save the drawings. No... no no no..." I leafed through pages stuck together, big bites taken out and browned. Some pages were just gone. Some were black. I couldn't even count all 54 drawings, the water had mixed with the ashes and glued them together. I finally flipped to the last drawing. It only had one burn spot. I ripped it out of the book with surgical precision from each wire in the spiral. The empty pages were mostly unburned. At this, I may have snorted aloud.
Just a few minutes before, everything was on fire, and rushing, and urgent. Now everything was wet. I don't remember how I felt as I hung up the drawing to dry in the dining room and fetched the garbage bag. I don't remember doing that part, but I must have. I remember the wetness and the moist, poison-tasting air. Opened all the windows, my feet slow, waterlogged even though I hadn't gotten them wet. My face was wet. A tear splashed against the new hole in the flesh of my breast. I remember thinking that it should burn, but it was a small thought that quickly evaporated. I stuffed soaked pillows into my black plastic sack. Burnt feathers, now, and burnt hair, slowly started to take over, and I blew the smell out of my nostrils at the sacrifice of taking in more scratchy air through my throat.
It was gone. I don't even remember giving first aid to Chris (but I did because he was in no shape to have done it), but I remember drying out that picture and re-drawing it on printer paper. I hadn't even scanned in most of those pictures, if any. It was supposed to be a surprise. It was supposed to be a gift. It was going to be 100 pages of six-horned dragon in graphite and a few colored pencils. That book was older than... well, it's gone, now. But the wet, smouldering anger isn't.
And now I know... that's why I still think about it. I am still really very angry. Even if you boiled it down to work-hours, I'd worked on that longer and harder than anything I'd made in years and years. I'd put love into that book. I never told Chris everything we lost, just cleaned up after him and swallowed that anger down. It's been growing like a cactus inside me ever since.
What good would it do to tell him, anyway? He can't change it now. He can only change what he will do.
I could start over, be more careful this time and not leave my sketchbooks on the cushions. It's been hard for me to draw with a pencil and not taste the wet, sulky ashes, but I can heal. I will. Maybe I will draw them again.
I light a candle early this morning just to look at the flames. I'm waiting for the doctor to call back. No work again today. Rain pelts the window as I sit in the bathroom in the dawning light, the candle reflected three times in three mirrors.
