Vastarien: A Literary Journal, vol. 2 issue 3 by Jonathan Padgett

Author:Jonathan Padgett [Padgett, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

In the kitchen I flicked through a cookbook and found one of Yola’s favorite recipes. A chocolate sponge cake. Looked simple enough.

First, I beat the eggs and sugar. I did this with a fork then wondered if I was doing it right. The cake was to be a surprise, but I thought maybe Yola would enjoy helping me make it, so I went up to see how she was.

I found her dozing, curled like a tiny bird on the mattress, sheets and blankets pushed to the floor. Her bare feet seemed too long and thin for her legs. Her bones poked sharp angles at her pajamas. Her neck stretched in an awkward curve, a small bulb of head tucked at her chest. Her body kept shifting proportion as it approached death.

I didn’t want to disturb her. I sat and looked. I did this often towards the end, usually when she was sleeping so she didn’t feel embarrassed. I was collecting images of her before she was no more. Something incredible was taking place. I didn’t want to miss anything. It was like breathing in the sharpest pain, but I needed these images of Yola. I stored them away in tiny crevices of myself, under the anger, behind the grief, and have not yet returned to retrieve them.

Fire had claimed her completely, in a cruel checkmate. It rushed across the land to meet her in triumph, for it had already bloomed inside her. It fed on her organs leaving them charred and lifeless. The doctors cut out pieces of lung, pieces of liver. They dosed Yola with chemotherapy, with radiation, but some fires can’t be controlled. Two years they said at first, maybe more, then they said twelve to six months, then they stopped guessing.

When she lay beside me at night, I dared not stroke her skin with anything more than a feathery touch, fearful she would crumble into a pile of grey ash. I traced thick scars where her flesh had fused together. Where scalpels held by gloved hands sunk with measured pressure, easy and deep, and blood took a moment to respond before flowing from the cut. She didn’t flinch, she let me, and the sight of the scars, their shape, feel and color, I stored away too.

When I kissed the points of her shoulders, I was not surprised by the odor of blackened brittle marrow that seeped through her pores. The fire was disintegrating her cell by cell in a slow, cruel burning.

Over the years I held Yola back. Saved her from herself, dragged her from burning buildings more than once, but there was nothing more I could do to protect her.

Let her go, said the voice of fire, riding on the wind, smacking my cheek, mocking.

I walked over to the window and shut it. The sky was tainted orange and brown, a storm of debris moved towards us.

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