The sky clock ticked to an early descent of darkness. Late December worked like that. In the air hung the threat of snow and burial – a promise of peace and disappearance.
The first burn of love gets a bad rap. Like the first anything, it’s not always as bad as we make it out to be. At least, that’s what I told myself. If it was a lie, it was a lie of protection, of self-preservation. It was a lie to save a life. The burns that came after were more intense, more cutting, more dangerous. Far from making me stronger, that first burn merely revealed what the pain was like; subsequent injuries would not be lessened by any sort of numbing effect – they would mount and multiply and murder more than once. “That which does not kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger – it just nearly kills you,” or something like that. And in our weakened state, when the heart wants what it wants, we do foolish things. If we happen to be the object of desire, we often act just as foolishly – sometimes more-so, true power being afforded so rarely in life. And being so admired places one squarely in a position of power, whether admitted, acknowledged, or ignored. True power stems largely from love. But we’re not supposed to say such things. That would eliminate the sentiment of it. That would extract the magic. That would mean we’re all mostly hollow.
LOVE IS A BURNING THING
AND IT MAKES A FIERY RING
BOUND BY WILD DESIRE
I FELL INTO A RING OF FIRE
Victims of love get more play than victors. Their story… ok, our story, is usually more exciting – and certainly more interesting unless you’re one of the parties involved. When I think back to some of my earlier adventures in romance, particularly the unrequited kind (and of those there were many) my mind recoils in a mixture of horror, hilarity, and hubris. How one young man could be so hysterically stupid and at the same time so full of himself still boggles my mind – and somehow I knew exactly what I was doing, even as I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. Self-awareness doesn’t necessarily equate to self-understanding. Only in the understanding of motive and impetus does one find healing and the ability to truly let go and move on. I could not know that then, and so I burned…
I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE
I WENT DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER
AND IT BURNS, BURNS, BURNS
THE RING OF FIRE… THE RING OF FIRE
Burning demands more of a soundtrack than the typical crackling of a quaint fireplace. A true burn must roar, consuming all the oxygen in its path. It should be the sound of suffocation. Utter annihilation. Or in the case of this song, whereby the burn is mostly silent, the sound of something evil.
The music here begins in slow, deliberately diabolical fashion. Sinister elegance. Innocent love song taken to a level of denigration and denial. Aural defiance. From the wreckage comes the wrecker ~ wreaker of havoc and destroyer of innocence ~ and when survival becomes the offense, the surest way of saving the heart is to go on the attack. Reverse the hunt.
It’s music that begins insidiously – start it again and listen to the beginning. It doesn’t bash you over the head, it doesn’t instantly demand submission. I’ve tried that, and very rarely did it work; when it did, it never ensnared anyone worth ensnaring. No, this version of the song starts off slowly. It is an entrance of dramatic import – the kind of entrance that someone earns from a life of loving the hard way. It is the entrance of a poet and an arsonist ~ the entrance of someone who’s learned how to burn.
THE TASTE OF LOVE IS SWEET
WHEN HEARTS LIKE OURS MEET
I FELL FOR YOU LIKE A CHILD
OH, BUT THE FIRE WENT WILD
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by fire. I’d play with matches and magnifying glasses, burning spent pine needles and following their hisses and little explosions. Some say it’s an early sign of serial killers or psychotics. I’d watch the trails of smoke left by discarded cigarettes in the ashtray at the entrance to OTB, when Dad would bring my brother and me there when Mom was at night school. Entranced by the way the smoke curled and dissipated, we’d go home reeking of it on our clothes and hair.
Candles held an allure that was as frightening as it was beautiful – and I still remember the shiver of dread I felt when the electricity was out one night, and we were sitting in the family room in candlelight. My brother shifted the table so that one of the candles started to fall off. Not knowing a thing about fire, I jumped up and grabbed it, certain that had it hit the carpet the whole house would have gone up in a split second, devouring all of us before we could even attempt to flee. Such was my misunderstanding of how fire worked.
A similar misunderstanding occurred when I fell in love the first few times. I always thought it was going to be forever, and I always thought it was going to be easy and perfect. If it involved bending or changing or compromise of any kind, it wasn’t to be. I ended a couple of romances that way. More often than not, however, others ended them for me. And a few times, others wouldn’t even let the spark start a fire.
But oh how I could strike that spark…
I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE
I WENT DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER
AND IT BURNS, BURNS, BURNS
THE RING OF FIRE… THE RING OF FIRE
