Love's Old Song

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. Mama liked to take the short way out. She burned our front yard to its bare bones, dousing the beautiful green blades and variegated plants in thick layers of gasoline every first of December.

Louis and I begged her every year to leave the leaves, let them decay to dust like the faeries in our old storybooks, but she always laughed and shook her head, sending ripples flowing through her beautiful red mane. 

-

Mama said that Papa married her for her hair, for the way it reminded him of a gorgeous autumn fire, snaking down her back in a thick braid. He used to trail his fingers through it, and say, “for you, my love, I’d give the world.” We never knew if he spoke to her hair or to Mama. Either way, they lived in their own world, together, both obsessing over the littlest parts of life. Louis and I got that from them too, but we did not receive the necessity for routineness that they craved. 

Papa said that Louis and I are twin flames, dancing in endless circles around each other, as our lives are intertwined. We were born on the cusp of autumn and winter, twelve and a half seconds apart, but we cried at the same time. I waited for Louis; I like to think that we share the same soul. Louis says he almost ate me in the womb. 

Louis said that Mama needed to grow up and get over herself, that we couldn’t do all the living for her. Mama disagreed, and hit him with the shoehorn. He cried that night, when he thought I wasn’t looking. 

I said that I knew why Mama kept holding onto Papa’s legacy, why she burned the yard brighter than a brilliant summer sunset against the Irish Sea. I would do the same for Louis. 

Mama began to burn the leaves the first autumn after Papa left for the sky. In November, she burned his body, and scattered his ashes in the wind. In December, she burned the yard. Maybe she thinks that the burning is a gift for his lost soul, to bring him home once more. Louis and I think she is burning her soul, leaf by leaf. 

-

This autumn is the very first that Louis will not be home. Mama shipped him off to the academy in Cork last week, packing all his things in a tidy trunk. I saw him to the train station, and sat in the station so long afterwards that the stationmaster asked me if I was an orphan. 

“No,” I said. “I’ve just lost my fire.” He looked at me, quite puzzled, but eventually left me alone. I couldn’t bear to return home, alone, not when it would just be me and Mama, together, two red ladies who’d lost their way. When I eventually trudged back, I immediately wrote a letter to Louis— thinking perhaps it would even arrive ahead of him, as the journey to the city was a few days’ worth. Now that I think of it, perhaps that was naive. Louis would certainly not want a letter from his sister to impress all the men in the city. 

-

I was lost in thought for a while. The leaves are all burnt to a crisp now, and I can only see the faintest traces of soot in ashen piles scattered across the yard. They’ll soon be gone too, washed away by the daily rain showers. Washed away, to return to the earth and sky, as Papa did. 

With Louis gone, I am desperately and quietly alone. I am not sure how Mama bears it every waking moment, living without her twin flame, half of her very soul. The old barn a mile’s journey from home has some tall rafters. Perhaps I should go jump off one and return to dust too. A tear rolls down my cheek, hot, searing, painful. It burns through my thin skin like a coal and it stings. 

I angrily swipe it away, but it reminds me of Louis, and how he used to cradle my head in the crook of his shoulder and gently clasp my hand in the palm of his own— he is just taller and larger than me by a few inches— and I break down on the side of the yard, crouching in the ditch next to a patch of thrushes and weeds. I quite honestly don’t even care that I’ve gotten my one pair of pants dirty, a calico that Mama only sewed for me after months of convincing. My body is filled with heat and hatred because Louis has left and I know that when he returns he will not be my Louis, he will be city Louis, changed, and different, and perhaps even with another girl on his arm who he will let lean on his shoulder. 

I again am pulled in the vague direction of the barn, and attempt to stumble forward, but something else holds me back, and I can’t quite tell what it is. It’s warm, and inviting, and smells like clean cut grass— and I turn around. Mama is holding me, wrapping her arms around me in an embrace. I didn’t even notice that she had approached me, joining me in my sorrow. 

I can’t help but lean into her body, and I close my eyes. She sings a sweet ballad that I remember from years ago: 

“So till the end, when life’s dim shadows fall,

Love will be found the sweetest song of all.

Just a song a twilight, when the lights are low,

And the flickering shadows softly come and go,

Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long,

Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song.”

And I am still, and I understand. That night, I set the back yard on fire, and we stand, hand in hand, for it is all that holds us together.