Like an Imaginary Moth to the Idea of a Flame

All stories are circular, I suppose. Mine included. 

We’ve let the music continue to play, a dull thrum in the background; I can’t tell what song it is anymore or where it’s coming from. I’m not sure if I care what song is playing anymore. I feel like my ears have already heard all that there is to hear, and cannot bear another note or tone.

I can see him from the kitchen, still laying on the old moth- eaten burgundy sofa, draped in a dull window curtain— years of use under the sun had drained it of its vibrant colors. I frown to myself. In the kitchen, it’s hard to feel the cold, not when I’m laying on our electric stove, imagining the days when the turn of a knob would heat the cool glass. I guess in the living room, it’s harder to feel that falsified warmth; we never owned a fireplace. The only warmth we ever had in the living room was the feel of another body pressed against our own when all five of us had to fit on that ragged sofa for movie night. The forever middle child, I found comfort in that— warm blood rushing against my skin, heated flesh against flesh. 

“Dad,” I call in a room temperature voice, not loudly, not quietly, not wanting to disturb what may lurk on the second floor. I usually have to say it a couple of times for him to wake up.

After a few moments, he stirs, snores becoming more sporadic and short, limbs visibly pulling and stretching from under the thin dull curtain.

“Whattimeisit?” He yawns, bending his arms over his bald head. I’m not sure. The timer on our microwave shut off a long time ago, I think. 

“Nine,” a voice calls from the hallway. I turn. Our hallway— walls littered in portraits of us children as babies, as kindergartens, as middle schoolers, as freshmen, as graduates— leads to our front door. The door’s closed. I’m not sure when it was opened last. 

“How do you know?” I walk over to peer more closely down the hall. My younger brother is there, tucked in the corner between the wall and the door, where we’d used to put our shoes. Five pairs of shoes, ten shoes altogether. My brother replaces them now, two pairs of limbs, four limbs altogether. His arms and legs used to be lean and wiry, in a healthy way that meant he went outside often and climbed trees. Now they are bony and thin, skin a papery white, like moth wings. His arms pulled across his knees are no different. 

“I have a watch,” he replies. Pale blue eyes blink at me, pupils out of focus. There is no watch on his wrist. 

“Where?”

“I have a watch,” he repeats indignantly. He’s never owned a watch in his life, not that I know of.

And this is what I mean when I say my story is circular. It’s always nine here, and I can’t argue otherwise. I have no evidence that it isn’t nine. I turn back to the living room. 

“Marsh says it’s nine, Dad.” I call. 

“Does he, now?” He murmurs sarcastically. And then: “One day, I’ll get us a clock. A digital one or one of those old fashioned ones. Something.” 

“Something.” I agree passively. But the front door’s closed and I don’t know when it was opened last. 

A particularly high and squeaky note plays somewhere in the house and I move back over to the stove. I crank the knobs all the way to level eight and then beyond that, as high as it will go. I trace my fingers along the outlined half circles on the stove. At one time, these lines would have lit red. My skin would have burned off. But now I’m only left with the memory of the heat. All that’s really left is the cold.

I take a pan from the pantry and place it down so that it aligns with the left most of the four circles. I place my palm in the center, so that my fingers curve upwards along the sides and my fingernails scrape the rim. I did this as a child, once, when Mom was cooking something. I don’t remember what. Luckily, my brain had more time to react than my mind did, pulling away the moment it registered the heat. 

Today, if I were to have done that, I’d have left my hand there. Let the heat travel up my arm and through my bones and to my brain and out my eyes and my nose. Not in the form of flames, but as red hot pain and wispy smoke. 

Let my hand scar, so that I’d never forget. So I’d always remember the heat, because now I had none. But I’ll take what I can get these days. 

Cold is no different than heat, it's just what happens after the heat has been there for a while and has outstayed its welcome. 

“Gracie,” my brother calls my name from the hall, which is not something he normally does, “someone just slipped a letter under the door. For you.”

“What? For me?” I look quizzically at Dad, who mirrors my expression from the sofa. He still hasn’t gotten up and I’m not sure if he ever will. Mom was right— I really did inherit his eyes and his nose. She’d said that. Once. 

“For you. Here. Come get it.” He will not get up to bring it to me. Mostly I’m the only one who leaves and enters rooms, so it’s standard procedure. 

I gingerly make my way down the hall, feeling the crumbs of dirt and grime stick to the bottoms of my feet, the creak and bend of the wood as foreign weight is placed upon it. From here, I have a clear view of the stairs, the dark intricate railing coated in a thick layer of gray dust. I almost reach out and touch it, but I don’t want to disturb what’s up there and so I think better of it. I pull my hand away and rather extend it to my brother, who’s still sitting there on the floor— now with his legs crossed, applesauce style. 

His face is sunken and his extended arm is trembling as he hands me the letter, as if he hasn’t raised it in a long time. I realize that this is not the boy I remember, who slept little and constantly had electricity coursing through his veins. He is different now. This whole place is different now. 

“Thank you.” I whisper, taking it. If I speak too loudly, I worry that Marsh’s bones will crumble from beneath his skin, like a sandcastle collapsing in on itself after a particularly harsh wave. 

I tear my eyes from my little brother’s frail figure. 

The letter is shaking in my hands, from nervousness or excitement, I’m not sure. My eyes glaze over the handwritten letters, taking in the shapes of the letters and the thickness of the ink, the pressure of the pen. There are dark smears across the paper in some places, like the author had been writing quickly and didn’t have time to let the ink dry. 

I can feel the desperation without reading a single word. True desperation, a want for immediate action.

“I’m leaving,” I announce, “for real this time. I’m not coming back.” I swallow. My vowels might have shaken in fear, but my confidence has not and will not waver.

“Okay,” Marsh says, tiredly. Like he’s heard this a hundred times. Which he hasn’t, because this time will be different. 

“Bye, Dad,” I say in my room temperature voice we are all used to. Still, I do not get an answer. I’m not sure if I’m being ignored or if he doesn’t hear me. 

Unlocking the door feels natural, while the click of the silver knob afterwards makes my heart skip a beat. I’m really doing this, I’m really doing this. The door cracks open and light floods through and dances against the walls. Not giving Marsh or anybody a second glance, I slip out the door and into the world that could’ve been mine if I’d simply let go of everything all those years ago. 

I want to say that’s the end of the story. A story where I left my rotting past where it should belong— in the past— and moved towards the future, where things were brighter and warmer. Where things were supposed to be brighter and warmer. 

But I have this gnawing monster in the pit of my stomach, and she looks like Mom. The monster looks like my brother, the older one. The monster’s teeth are sharp and its cries are incessant. Return, it cries, come back to me. I’m able to resist it for a while and tune it out. I distract myself with new smells and new sounds. But that’s the thing. They’re new. They don’t know me like my home does. 

So I always find my way back and I hate it when I do.

I walk back in that front door. My senses have been denied what they’ve been used to for so long, so it’s almost a surprise to smell the rot on the second floor, the music playing from a speaker somewhere in the house. The darkness and cold of the kitchen, the dustiness of the hallway, the antiquity of the living room. At once, it’s all so new and yet all so familiar. 

“I’m home,” I whisper, disturbing the quiet squeal of a guitar solo. Marsh is there, in the corner. Listening and watching, eyes wide.

“Good. It’s been so cold since you’ve left… I’m starving,” His voice is croaky from disuse. He and Dad don’t talk. 

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, pushing towards the kitchen. I don’t want to look at him anymore. There’s another boy in my mind who is playing in the water sprinkler outside, running and hopping like a rabbit being chased by a rabid dog. The rabid dog caught up at some point and feasted on the rabbit, ripping it apart bit by bit. Now the rabbit is a hollow corpse.

Dad is snoring softly on the couch, looking like he hasn’t moved since I left. Which he probably hasn’t. 

I take my place in front of the kitchen stove that doesn’t work anymore. I turn the knobs and place my palms in the centers of the circles, feeling the imaginary heat, the ideas of flames.