Toasted and burned
21 May 2011 06:19 AM Categories: Writing prompts | Food
I am an outlier.
We had a fire in the downstairs fireplace on Sunday night, a special treat while the husband was out of town, and in preparation I bought some marshmallows and prepared the boy for the process. The firewood we used was old and eager to disintegrate in the heat. I’m nervous around fires with small children. My grandfather was burned in an industrial fire, 80% of his body covered in 3rd degree burns, a foot later amputated, hearing gone. A drooping sleeve can catch flame, a little boy's hands can get too close when putting a stick into the stack of flaming wood. Still, the boy got to contribute, collected sticks and sometimes put them in, rolled up the newspaper fire starter.
I toasted the first marshmallow and passed it to him: instant hatred and tears, at the texture, the goo in his mouth and on his finger. He doesn’t like marshmallows much anyway and a toasted one is marshmallow intensified, the flavor, the mouth feel. I ate that one, and the next and gave up on the project.
We stared at the flames. I added more wood. The room was warm. We let the fire soothe us with its smoky breath of autumn, its winter memories, and I wondered how I had ended up in a place where summer mornings are colder than November nights, where the fog obscures the sun in fits of anguish and shorts in August are ill-advised, a decision to shiver all day, the place where a fire in May makes sense.
But it’s beautiful here, once you get past the long asphalt stretches with their crummy shops and the avenues concreted up against anything green. The hills are lovely, the sky an amazing thing when it’s almost clear and the clouds puff and stretch against the blue. You can visit summer in the summer, go to the heat past the hills, and bask and swim and then, tired of sweat and brightness, return to Berkeley where you sleep under layers of blankets, waiting for the distant fog horn to wake you up. Downstairs the fireplace awaits, the tinder is dry and yields easily to the match. While the boy is content with dry cereal, you can toast marshmallows for your breakfast, let the caramelized skin give way to soft sweetness, close your eyes as the sugar dances through your body.
From the prompt "Pillow talk." Marshmallows are like little pillows, aren't they?
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. I spend about 20 minutes making this one flow better. Seems I'm doing that more lately, but I think my prompts just aren't as clearly written lately. Feeling much better than yesterday, however.
Image: Sunday's fire.
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