Burn it Down to the ground

He was born into a world already on fire, so it was no wonder he possessed a predisposition to set it all aflame from time to time. To burn it all down to the ground was both a war cry for freedom and his process of sending up a white flag, begging to be saved. The chaos of not being cared for as a child had set him on this path, those tender years untethered, adrift, with no guidance but a book of matches. His fingers, they would itch for matches.

She had learned from falling in love with others, that if you listened closely to the words of your lover at the very beginning, they would reveal how they would leave you in the end. His stories were full of rust and rot, of shards of glass and blackened bricks. How he had moved through the world like a forest fire, propelled along by his own wind, pushed forward by unseen forces, voices that pressed him into action, cajoling him to outrun, outrace and outpace those demons, and lean down as he sprinted, flick that Bic, letting the embers fly in his wake.

"I’m afraid I’m gonna fuck this up,” he had confessed to her in those early days.

And truthfully, how he came into this world is how he would exit hers. This combustible combination of the urge to systematically destroy, and sprint. He was a man who did not care to wait for the pain to come from the outside. To be born surrounded by flames will propel a man to always fan those coals back to life. Walking through the world with a destructive sense of despair becomes soothing, like a teething ring. He would bite down hard, until the pain in his jaw no longer made him flinch. Destroy it yourself before anyone else ever has the chance, that is the mantra of the ones who are addicted to sabotage.

And softness, like the tender love of a kind woman, can only soothe for so long. He would never be able to deny that he did love her. He loved her with his entire chest. She was both a dream and a promise. She felt like hope and she felt like home. She was a future vision of a front porch in the hazy sunset in the New England summertime, both of them wrinkled and grey, with their fingers linked in the sway of a creaking swing, laughing at the years that had past as they lived them together, triumphing over any tragedy, transgression or treason. She was the period at the end of his sentence. She was truly cherished.

But his fingers, they itched for matches.

A man completely in love may still be driven by a dead-set desire of destruction of that dream. It did not come from boredom, as she never had bored him. She made him laugh and she made him light. She was lightness personified, with a voice like honey over the phone, herself fully convinced of all he believed he could never be, as she saw him as a story that had not yet reached its glorious conclusion. It was not the sex they had, as sexually, their connection was splendid, all at once crazy sensual and satisfying and sublime. They furiously occupied every pore on their bodies, lasciviously lavishing each other in that way of the crazy in love. It was not the sex. There was no sudden lack of physical attraction to her. He lusted after her like a schoolboy when she walked in front of him, her short skirt giving a slight sway as she swung her hips. He like to drink up her body like an enormous gulp of water, with a thirst could never be fully quenched. He loved the shape of her, the softness to her hips, the muscles in her legs, the firmness of her ass, and the slope of her full breasts. She did not annoy him. He loved the way she ordered at a restaurant, like the menu was merely suggestive, the meals listed as simply ingredients for her to build her own perfect salad. And that morning coffee she prepared for them was the best he had ever sipped.

No, her crime was far more serious, as she threatened to fully strip him of his armor, that strong barbed wire that had kept him concealed from torment since he was old enough to shoplift a Zippo. Somehow, in the story of their passion, she had slipped underneath, and climbed down into his foxhole, where, truly, there was only room for one. And that, her presence there beside him underground, where he sheltered from all his suffering, was a condemnation, a prison sentence, a nuclear missile warning of DEFCON 1. He was under attack, and the feeling was like a full body panic. His heart began to beat just a little too fast, and his forehead brimmed with beaded sweat, even in the chill of the New England winter wind. She had penetrated his fortress. Now alarm bells sounded, blaring inside his head like the clanging of a deranged monkey banging his cymbals together frantically, screaming to him that it was time to GET OUT. As he walked about and went about his day, there was that continued screeching and shrieking in his brain that this, this lovely life, with this woman he still desired on the daily, it had all become too dangerous. To be known this well was to be laid open, bare naked, beyond vulnerable. His personal pledge had been to refuse to ever be as unguarded as he had been when he had been small and easily injured. This had to end now. His fingers more than itched for matches. His hands were reaching for a flame thrower, gasoline, an exit strategy. The scent of sulphur would return him to safety. To sanity.

A wise woman will recognize the signs. How suddenly, her man has become a walking red flag warning, a high pressure dome of low humidity, with the wind rising along with the temperature, the vegetation on the ground parched, as conversation has suddenly turned as scare as rainfall in a California summer, stilted and shifting among half truths. Any simple spark would cause a major wild fire, as his burn index has risen far above 151.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, with a loving concern, as she had been scanning the skies for signs of his shortcomings. She had sensed it immediately, this almost imaginary, microscopic shift in his attentions that most might miss. A delay in texting back. Distraction over the phone. His eyes, glued to the TV instead of her juicy thigh thrown over his, the volume turned up just loud enough to block her out.

He evaded her probing, and instead gave her platitudes of promises. Even as he set up the retreat, and readied his troops for withdrawal, and secretly, set up an entirely new life. He plied her with that most basic of lies.

“Nothing's wrong.”

She could already smell the smoke, and yet, it still caught her by surprise when it all imploded. That tiny flicker of flame that caught so quick left her breathless and blindsided when she realized their love had already become an inferno. No pleadings or anguished cries could subdue those flames. They had spread too far to save the structure of what had held and housed their hearts together. And, as their connection lay burning in flames, he gave his full confession. It was all done. He held new keys to a new house. And there was nothing for her to do but grieve.

As he fled down the highway, each mile marker he passed pressed a tiny shard of his armor back into its proper place. One hundred miles into his flight for freedom, he began to feel sheltered again, protected from the penetration of forces he could not control. Or a woman who would know him too well. With that threat lessened, the sweat on his brow began to dissipate. Of course he felt true sorrow at letting her go, but the compulsion to burn it all down to the ground was stronger than the craving to keep her. Fire cleanses the soul, he thought, and from the ashes he would rise again, with armor intact, barbed wire firmly in place, purged and purified. He sped south on the highway, his headlights flashing like ghosts in the dark night, spotlights of clarity, but still not enough illumination to draw him from the deep denial of his deeds. His skin awash in sweet relief, his only thoughts were a childish singsong refrain in his head.

"I am safe. I am safe. I am safe. "