from M. (2006)
for M. (2011)
with love & understanding.
Once, as a child, I sat down next to my father, his face covered in stubble that I would one day be able to replicate with much greater density, to watch him build a fire in our basement. It was not a particularly cold day, as I recall, but the house’s heater was broken and my mother was complaining from what she perceived to be a chill. I sat there, sipping chocolate milk out of the container, and watched him, wide-eyed, as he arranged logs in the belly of our black iron stove. He was meticulous in his arrangement, telling me that there was a certain way to do it, so as each log would burn off each other, fall into one another, allowing for maximum warmth. I listened as he crumpled up the parts of the newspaper that none of us in the house ever read, or really had any reason to read. The crinkles were coupled with my slurping of milk, creating a cacophony that I found infinitely enjoyable. He tucked those balls of stock reports and indices deep into the hidden pockets between the logs, snug and nestled into their chambers of assured destruction. He smiled at me as he lit a long match and let it linger next to one ball then another and another until each caught fire and began to curl into itself. The wood, as I recall, was quite dry and did not take long to catch fire itself. Having finished my milk, I crawled into his lap and we watched together as each piece of wood caught fire, flames licking the top of the stove, and I could feel both the heat of the fire and my father’s breathing body. He held me, as we both became entranced by the flames, becoming near blinding bushes of light, reflected off my father’s glasses and onto my skin. My father closed the door to the stove as I fell deeper into the pockets of his arms, and heard the sound of the logs falling into each other which felt so distant, yet near, from the place that I was now.
