"
This was terribly hard to do, because written-on paper burns reluctantly.
"
-Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I made a bonfire last night, feeding it all your novels and notebooks, your diaries and magazines. There may have even been some of mine in there, but devil knows I haven't read a book in months, if not a year already, so what do I care. I can't help but see a wall of words stacked in front of my face, filling me with the desire to punch a hole through the paper and binding, and as I remove my hand, peer through the tiny prison cell window into the world.
The glossy periodicals went up first, the yellow flames looking a bit sick as they digested the various inks and chemicals. The models on the pages didn't blink as their faces were blackened and eventually erased altogether.
It occurred to me that I had forgotten the recent novel that you had finished and left on the bed. I walked back into the bedroom and found it undisturbed from where it had landed like a pine cone last week, fluffed and ruffled and spent of its contents. I looked around for any other forgotten texts: a piano score you had printed out, a newspaper with employment ads circled in blue ink, an inhaler prescription, a love letter written on a dollar bill.
I wrote a check out for the rest of the money I owed you, and hung a sheet over the mirror.
All that was left on the bonfire when I returned were some drawings from your sketchbook and the letters we had written each other while I was studying abroad, while you were visiting your relatives in the mountains, while you were in the kitchen. Bulgakov was right: the written-on pages stubbornly refused the flames, but even they eventually succumbed. Without ever changing colour or the shape of your looping cursive, the words clung obdurately to the crisping and crackling paper until, finally, your heartfelt confessions rose like smoky whispers into the ears of the night sky, leaving me with the cooling white-edged embers of all that remained.
This was terribly hard to do, because written-on paper burns reluctantly.
"
-Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I made a bonfire last night, feeding it all your novels and notebooks, your diaries and magazines. There may have even been some of mine in there, but devil knows I haven't read a book in months, if not a year already, so what do I care. I can't help but see a wall of words stacked in front of my face, filling me with the desire to punch a hole through the paper and binding, and as I remove my hand, peer through the tiny prison cell window into the world.
The glossy periodicals went up first, the yellow flames looking a bit sick as they digested the various inks and chemicals. The models on the pages didn't blink as their faces were blackened and eventually erased altogether.
It occurred to me that I had forgotten the recent novel that you had finished and left on the bed. I walked back into the bedroom and found it undisturbed from where it had landed like a pine cone last week, fluffed and ruffled and spent of its contents. I looked around for any other forgotten texts: a piano score you had printed out, a newspaper with employment ads circled in blue ink, an inhaler prescription, a love letter written on a dollar bill.
I wrote a check out for the rest of the money I owed you, and hung a sheet over the mirror.
All that was left on the bonfire when I returned were some drawings from your sketchbook and the letters we had written each other while I was studying abroad, while you were visiting your relatives in the mountains, while you were in the kitchen. Bulgakov was right: the written-on pages stubbornly refused the flames, but even they eventually succumbed. Without ever changing colour or the shape of your looping cursive, the words clung obdurately to the crisping and crackling paper until, finally, your heartfelt confessions rose like smoky whispers into the ears of the night sky, leaving me with the cooling white-edged embers of all that remained.
