the wounds.
For a while this sensation of publicity. Television crews from stations local and national arrived, along the highway their white trucks and television cameras, their images blurred for the smoke, the air bending against the blue flame. Reporters and the ârare phenomenaâ of the burning house, their makeup smudged for ash, their eyes and mouths smeared with charcoal. The redness of the heat. The way their eyes watered and blurred. Scientists arrived in station wagons wearing lab coats soon blackened for the soot, scientists carried thermometers and vials, and now scientists gauged and calculated, whistled and rubbed their brows, scientists wrote lengthy papers articulating the nature of their findings, the permanence of the flame, and they delivered these papers to men in ties and black-rimmed glasses, men of impassive faces who had only read what heat does to a manâs membrane. Men who did not comprehend how the house grinned with vibrations. Then wanderers and zealots arrived with gifts for the house. They left dollar bills and coins pressed into the soot mounded along the lawns, they prayed on their knees and stamped their foreheads to the blackness. They carried children bloated and wheezing with diphtheria to the flames as if these fumes would somehow clear their clotted throats. For awhile this sensation of publicity although all influence is soon forgotten, all horror and value is subdued, and a house that burns forever soon becomes as any other.
Now a woman vibrated into shadow. Now her fluids gone into steam.
Now this family and how they purchased the land. He, jobless after the factory closed, and she, a waitress in the café, and how they could afford no other. This young family who bought this house always burning. How they told each other it was not really so bad. Ankle deep in soot and watching the weird glow, the flickering. This what their lives had grown into. From their station wagon they brought their tent and their boxes of clothes and pots and bug sprays and hammers. Soon they erected their canvas tent and under the weight of the glow, this man and woman, waiting for the end of these flames. Now, secluded and playing pinochle, singing songs and strumming guitar, making love and dreaming of a child. Yes. For what is a man and woman together without new life between them.
How the flames whispered in the voice of white flashes.
How the husband would say, âI think itâs waning, some.â The glowing membrane of the canvas. Later, they shoveled the soot off the tent, always shoveling with bandanas tied over their mouths, always dressed in navy blue exterminator clothes, always the goggles, fogged with soot. Still how they made love, the slide of soot along their canvas walls as her nose against his neck and the burn fumes, the tongue along the rim of his ear, her teeth a soft nibble, and now her mouth slumped open with charcoal as they pant, finished.
âI donât think it will ever end,â she said and through the canvas, the never waning house, how it smoldered, always alive.
How in those days we insulated the walls with hair, bones of children, farm animals dead, he said. Entire horse carcasses often warmed the children within.
Now the boy who dreamed from the soil. How he woke and how he crawled from within. Now the boy and how he sat on the hillside and how he knew the breathing and strumming of the man and woman. How he knew their dreams. How they believed, some day, green lawns and above ground pools. How they believed a badminton net. A riding lawnmower and lemonade. How the boy knew the creature that rose within. Now along the hillside the boy watched the canvas tent alighted, yellow and red. Their shadows moving together. Their moans under the moan of the wind, the splintering of the burning house. How he wondered what a lit match does to canvas, the ash and red cinders diminishing everywhere around him, as if a snow storm or memories of Tokyo,
For a while this sensation of publicity. Television crews from stations local and national arrived, along the highway their white trucks and television cameras, their images blurred for the smoke, the air bending against the blue flame. Reporters and the ârare phenomenaâ of the burning house, their makeup smudged for ash, their eyes and mouths smeared with charcoal. The redness of the heat. The way their eyes watered and blurred. Scientists arrived in station wagons wearing lab coats soon blackened for the soot, scientists carried thermometers and vials, and now scientists gauged and calculated, whistled and rubbed their brows, scientists wrote lengthy papers articulating the nature of their findings, the permanence of the flame, and they delivered these papers to men in ties and black-rimmed glasses, men of impassive faces who had only read what heat does to a manâs membrane. Men who did not comprehend how the house grinned with vibrations. Then wanderers and zealots arrived with gifts for the house. They left dollar bills and coins pressed into the soot mounded along the lawns, they prayed on their knees and stamped their foreheads to the blackness. They carried children bloated and wheezing with diphtheria to the flames as if these fumes would somehow clear their clotted throats. For awhile this sensation of publicity although all influence is soon forgotten, all horror and value is subdued, and a house that burns forever soon becomes as any other.
Now a woman vibrated into shadow. Now her fluids gone into steam.
Now this family and how they purchased the land. He, jobless after the factory closed, and she, a waitress in the café, and how they could afford no other. This young family who bought this house always burning. How they told each other it was not really so bad. Ankle deep in soot and watching the weird glow, the flickering. This what their lives had grown into. From their station wagon they brought their tent and their boxes of clothes and pots and bug sprays and hammers. Soon they erected their canvas tent and under the weight of the glow, this man and woman, waiting for the end of these flames. Now, secluded and playing pinochle, singing songs and strumming guitar, making love and dreaming of a child. Yes. For what is a man and woman together without new life between them.
How the flames whispered in the voice of white flashes.
How the husband would say, âI think itâs waning, some.â The glowing membrane of the canvas. Later, they shoveled the soot off the tent, always shoveling with bandanas tied over their mouths, always dressed in navy blue exterminator clothes, always the goggles, fogged with soot. Still how they made love, the slide of soot along their canvas walls as her nose against his neck and the burn fumes, the tongue along the rim of his ear, her teeth a soft nibble, and now her mouth slumped open with charcoal as they pant, finished.
âI donât think it will ever end,â she said and through the canvas, the never waning house, how it smoldered, always alive.
How in those days we insulated the walls with hair, bones of children, farm animals dead, he said. Entire horse carcasses often warmed the children within.
Now the boy who dreamed from the soil. How he woke and how he crawled from within. Now the boy and how he sat on the hillside and how he knew the breathing and strumming of the man and woman. How he knew their dreams. How they believed, some day, green lawns and above ground pools. How they believed a badminton net. A riding lawnmower and lemonade. How the boy knew the creature that rose within. Now along the hillside the boy watched the canvas tent alighted, yellow and red. Their shadows moving together. Their moans under the moan of the wind, the splintering of the burning house. How he wondered what a lit match does to canvas, the ash and red cinders diminishing everywhere around him, as if a snow storm or memories of Tokyo,
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