The work, which has so unraveled everything, is just smoking softly in the corner. The drift of grey comes across the afternoon and I watch it without interest from my spot in the yard.
That friendship, which seemed such a pyre, bursting up with Katherine Wheels of bile and bitterness. Now just a smoldering mess; kicking up the coals with a boot turns up another red, glowing lump, but only for a little while longer.
Somewhere, far off in the corner, is a melted mess of old car tires. Their toxic plumes wrote hate messages into the sky and they could see for miles the mess that we were in. It was like sky-writing your own death notice.
I watched all the red hot lights, of you and me, and he and she, and them and this, and there and then.
When all the smoke was wiped with wind, when all the ashes swirled and lifted up like ghosts to God, I walked amongst the seething piles and chose the brittle sticks of charcoal. I took them to the whitewashed wall of the farmhouse and I drew you, nude upon the bed and lying like a child. In giant black lines, I made a mural of the smoldering sadness, I palmed you in with shading and soft curves. Out of all the ugliness, the burning and the destruction, the razing of me and all, I drew your love upon my wall.
You have a red hot heart.
eleanor j jackson 