Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The warm of a fire doesn't just extend to the outer body for me. It's an emotional comfort and form of nostalgia that soothes. I've had a lot of memories that haunt me for weeks when they are triggered to the forefront of my mind but my fireplace has never betrayed me. We'd always talked about burning our books in the fireplace someday. I personally wanted to burn my history book but when the time came, I couldn't find it. The first book that we both blurted out was Fredrick Douglass. Oh how we laughed. It was wonderful, really. We raced to our rooms and came back with two books each. While digging out my Fredrick Douglass I had also found Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. The only useful knowledge, if you can even call it useful, from that book was the image of a comic portraying the day he met his wife. She was carrying some bread and he said "Those are some nice puffy rolls." And she said back, "Yours isn't bad either." Hint hint. Of course, the teacher didn't tell us that second part. Ah, the inner workings of a high schooler with hormones on the fritz.

My brother had come back with Yellow Creek and Fredrick Douglass. It was some depressing book where he said the plot didn't start until the very last five chapters or so. Dreadful, really. He rambled on and on about how much he despised the book then tore out the pages and cast them into the fire. I wish we had burned Fredrick Douglass first but I was enjoying the sight of my brother's joy too much to interject. He offered the book and we grabbed at the pages, greedily tearing fat chunks out for ourselves to cast in. We stuffed the wood with the pages: some we even lit then waved about in the air before setting them on the stack of burning wood. We felt such pride in watching our sufferings burn. The flame puttered but when we reached the last of the pages we simply threw the entire binding and whatever scraps were left into the dying flame. We pulled out the other pages, this time relishing in each page's death. It was much slower and yet, less satisfying. Our minds wandered and in the end we tossed the book with nearly half of its pages still bound into the stack. The fire raged and enveloped around the binding. First it covered the book then it pierced through the heart. From there it spread like a disease, eating up everything it touched till it was all black. Torched. We torched our memories and hateful scorn. We fed our sufferings to the flame and it was good.

I've given birth to a love near the flame and hidden secrets. We've shared the same moonlit scenery and wonder towards the time. I tend to the fireplace and it tends to my heart in return. Unknowingly it brings me together and takes me apart. Through the repetition, I find a meaning and a song. Surely the fireplace is the home of my heart. It is the hearth to my home.