It occurred to me today that I would like very much to set fire to a house. Create a conflagration for the for the beauty of heat red and gold. Flames licking out windows as if the building were cleaning its mouth of human inhabitants. It would have been a home once, it might have been where someone grew up. In my mind I am removing it from history in beauty, in sparks showering the sky with new stars which wink out as they fall back to earth. Bathed in gold, we could stand there, you and I and I, holding hands, the light reflecting off my glasses, shimmering inside your eyes.
I’ve never seen a real building burn down.
I want it to have an attic. I want it to have peeling wall paper and wooden floors with crooked nails. There should be a space where the bath-tub used to be before it was ripped out. I want scuff marks, crayon on a wall, the parts and pieces of absence. For the night to be perfect? Musicians sitting in full rental gear, black tie. Four of them sawing bows across strings in long languid strokes and a piano to counterpoint the cello, the dan bou, the two viola players.
This house never had a white picket fence. Instead it stands behind a low stone wall, shoring up the elevation of ground upon which it was laid. In a movie, there would be helicopters and spotlights shining, piercing the dark to kill us with night blindness. In real life, the girl never twists her ankle, never falls when she’s running in sensible shoes. Instead she flies on legs like wind, on pistoning feet while she laughs, but there would be no reason to run. No reason to leave the flame. We’ll sit in the street eventually and crane out necks back to look at our pet sun.
my music and something webby found by andrew *pun*