Flame

Flame

k. e. sharp



         The fire was beginning to die when he sat down amidst the ashes.  Carelessly, he tossed a broken piece of two-by-four into the last, shuddering flames, sending a cascade of glowing red confetti into the air.  Confetti – yes, it was a celebration of sorts.  The fire pounced on the new wood with the ferocity of a jungle animal and grew brighter.  The man, shivering despite the warmth, pulled his jacket closer around him and hunched his shoulders.

         He sat, motionless, for a long while, waiting for her to appear.  It would befit her to come back now, at the very end.  But the night air remained silent, no sound of her footsteps or her gentle breathing, only the constant, laughing crackle of the fire.

         Five more minutes – maybe it was hours – or so passed.  He fed the fire another piece of wood, watched as it was slowly blackened and consumed.  He stared, spellbound, as he realized that by destroying the wood, the fire was in fact cutting its own life short.

         Love is the same, he thought.  It suffocates itself with its intensity.

         The sun had finished setting now, and a huge, near-full moon hung low on the blue-black horizon.  The few stars overhead reflected the dancing light of the fire.  A cold wind whipped up, threatened to extinguish the flames, and then died as suddenly as it had begun.

         She still hadn’t shown up.

         Once, on her birthday, he sent her a hundred long-stemmed roses of a dozen different colors.  Red, yellow, white; the full spectrum of emotion delivered into her hands.  That night, as they lay in each others’ arms, she had told him never to do it again.

         “Did it embarrass you?” he asked, burying his face in the soapy-sweetness of her hair.

         “No, that’s not it.  It just… frightened me.  I couldn’t breathe.”

         At the time, he didn’t understand, but he let it go and never said another word.  He contented himself by doing small things like writing poems and leaving them on his pillow when he had to go to work before her.  Better that than to wake her.  Sometimes, the words failed him and his pen simply scrawled “I love you” over and over until the letters became illegible.  These, too, he left for her.  When he got home, she never mentioned the notes, and he could never figure out what she did with them.

         The night was growing colder; it felt like November.  The man felt about the ground for more wood, found none.  He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked slowly back and forth.

         “You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” she’d said jokingly once, a lifetime ago.  “Sometimes, I think it’ll kill me.”

         He sighed, then furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.  Something was in his pocket, pressing against his arm.  He fumbled in the dim light of the failing flames, retrieved a small, cream-colored envelope.  His name was written scribbled in hasty cursive on the front.

         He’d almost forgotten; he’d received a note as well, less than a day ago.  No rhyming couplets or painfully beautiful metaphors here, though.  As he pulled the sheet of paper from its envelope and leaned toward the fire, he did have to admit that there was a certain poetry in the words.

         “I can’t stay here anymore.  There’s no air left between us, and I need to breathe.  Otherwise, I feel like I’ll just disappear.  Please understand, it’s not that I need someone who’ll love me more.  I need someone who can love me less.”

         There was something else in the envelope: a single rose so deep red it might have been black.  The man gazed at it for a long moment, and then tossed it and the note into the fire.  They disappeared in a tongue of blue flame.

         I need someone who can love me less.

         He remembered now, the note had been lying next to him when he’d woken up that morning.  That one single blossom lay next to it, its color sending a chill of fear through him.  He’d known at that moment that she wasn’t coming back.

         I need to breathe…

         When had he decided that fire was the only answer, the only solution?  When had the idea formed in his mind that it was the only way he could bring her back?  Like a phoenix, she would rise from the ashes, and she would see how much he really loved her by his ability to destroy everything they had created.  If suppressing his love was the only way he could express it, then…

         The wind kicked up again, carrying the sharp, cloying scent of gasoline.  The flames flickered in his eyes, burning the memories forever into his mind.  Carried by the breeze, a piece of lace curtain drifted to him, and it landed by his shoe.  As he bent to pick it up, something else caught his eye.  It was a scrap of paper, half-burned, the edges curled and charred.  It was part of a poem, a quote he’d shamelessly stolen from some forgotten source.

         “Love is like oxygen,” was all it said.

         He tried to laugh at the irony of that one, simple statement but was stopped by the tears that stung his eyes.  Oxygen had fed the flames, but now there was none and the fire was all but gone.

         The man stood, staring out over that blackened, alien landscape of burnt wood and melted glass.  She would never come back, would never see the perfect destruction he had wrought for her, his greatest gift.  He watched, waited breathlessly until a gust of wind extinguished the last few struggling flames, leaving the night drenched in darkness.  There was nothing left, not a single glowing ember.  Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he turned and walked slowly away.