The Arsonist

Sometimes memories come, so vividly and sharply it pains me. They are like sparks that start a fire that I find myself stoking; sometimes casually and halfheartedly, bemused and only slightly interested. Sometimes the memory presents itself and I dive headfirst down the rabbit hole to follow it. I cling to it, searching the Kalahari Desert of my mind for kindling, blowing on the hazy smoke filled trenches of my brain with the intensity of the bellows of hell to keep it burning. I pour gasoline on the thing and inevitably, the intensity builds to a point where this fire has become out of control. I find myself lost in a bushfire of uncontrollable nostalgia.

I try to stop the thing, to escape the heat, to extinguish the flames but it’s too late. I’ve done it again and now I have to categorically burn each and every recollection I can find, occasionally throwing in plastic and all sorts of stuff that’s not real to fuel this mess. I must keep the fire going until it burns itself out, the toxic smoke of the untruths I’m attributing to you choking me and yet necessary. I burn a wide swath around the places that burn hottest, hoping that if I indulge this one, just this once, it’ll go away forever, or at least long enough to let me heal from these latest burns a bit.

On occasion the fire gets too hot and I sweat and I panic, I go a bit mad, I scramble to desperately try to create new memories. I try to make and have and do so much that whatever is left behind from before pales in comparison. In some ways it works, I succeed. Between here and there is no comparison. I am here and I wouldn’t change that. But to long for you, all of you, and home and what I left, to miss such silly things as to be hard to describe to those who live them every day, it’s difficult. To honestly describe yearning for pavement and streetlights and salads and bubble baths just becomes really strange. It’s difficult for me to believe I’m not crazy.

Sometimes I try to deny the reality of it all completely. I try to recreate the memories, or replace them with new ones, to make it all seem uglier so it’s not so painful. I try to make you into someone that would have been easy to leave, to forget, to let go of. Someone who’s not who you are. I try to create new memories; or to mold them out of clay or carve them out of wood or shape them out of metal, but they look garish and ridiculous next to the crystal clear recollections that hold the emotional bouquet of who I remember you to be. All of these new pieces melt away in the heat, and the flowers, which should wither and die in the flames, remain as fresh and when they first bloomed. There are times when I’m strong and can withstand the flames. There are times when I cannot. It comes down to a choice, because I can’t keep all these memories of you and still continue to become me. If I keep living this way, with memories of you starting these massive fires in my mind I will be left with nothing, having burned everything in my path, the charred remains of who I could have become all that remains. And I won’t do it.

I walk these coals, they have become familiar. They burn into the scars deep within me, searing not just my flesh but my bones, which feel as bleached and brittle and white as the bones of the elephant we found last week, dead for many years, and just as unable to hold up the person who must walk this Earth each day. And yet I do, and I can and I learn. I’ve danced before these particular flames before. I do it, I know it hurts, and yet I burn, I burn. I begin to relish the pain a bit, scratching at the blisters, watching them ooze and hoping this is the last case of arson, and knowing it’s not. The fire burns hotter and hotter, threatening to engulf me, and yet I know it never will. Not completely.

So I try, again and again, to put out the candle.