Bonfire

Yeah, well, we didn't leave today.

I've been back to the house only twice since my mom died. The trip, anymore, is mired in things to be done, divided and eventually boxed up and moved out. The museum is closing down. The one place where you knew every exhibit is selling off the collection. Certainly everything that fills the house are the possessions of my parents, but they were mine,too, in that I could count on finding them in the places they had always been. There is comfort in knowing someone, namely a parent, is managing the family photos, the early finger-paintings and report cards. To a large extent it allowed me to stay a child, knowing mom would "take care of it." Shouldn't we all have that guarded receptacle of home? And it's protector? I don't know what is worse in the death of parents; their actual loss or the sudden responsibility for the artifacts of our entire life. Artifacts minus the person who collected them minus their voice describing them minus their meaning to them minus your meaning to them. Nothing. Please pass the Zippo and gasoline.

The house is a thing filled with many other things. Each of them must be turned over and looked at, taken out and transported from the only place I ever imagined them. Breaking up the shells and rocks and sand that two people had gathered in their socks and pockets. Tis times like these when a proper burn seems not merely the easiest approach but the only logical means by which to cast back a set of things that makes no sense divided.