Everything

He burned everything or so we all thought. There was the fire of his house and then the other things he lit on fire along with himself in the wilderness. I remember looking at a crafty little painting once in the home of a girl I was seeing. She said her grandmother had done it. That’s cool I told her. Her grandmother was dead. I tell my own mother that we will not have these things around to stare at and say, that was his. I was free, my mother, my sister, they were being called liars by it, by the whole thing. I imagine some jerk demanding my mother prove she had another son and her looking frantically about the living room but there is just ash where pictures, a chair and that cool candle holder should be. I imagine the jerk telling her, that’s not a son, and her looking at a pinch of ash between her fingers and wondering what happened to the pitcure, why there was only ash.

I drove around in the wilderness looking for the spot. I asked everyone but the police at the station. Once I even thought I saw smoke. I pulled over but it was just weeds burning. I looked just the same, kicking in the dirt for the coin collection or one of his rings.

There are no women that I will be with, they are all jerks. They don’t want to be told about the cool things he destroyed, or how he used to threaten us with killing himself, shaking a gallon of distilled water at us or how I would say, put down the water, you don’t want to do this, and laugh. I just wait for them to leave and then I never call them again. Once I told a girl that he painted something for me. I was going to tell her how the painting had dried weird and how he took it back to fix it and it never came back. I was going to tell her that I wondered if he had put it somewhere, the painting he gave to me, or if he had burned it. I was going to tell her how I wondered if it was burned with his house or if it was one of the things the police said he took with him into the wilderness to go up with him. She just looked down and scratched her leg and made a face. I left. I just got right up and walked out. Not a word. Fuck her.

I never get a letter. I never open the door and see him there, laughing, saying he made it, he’s ok now while dusting off ash from the fire he lit to kill himself with. If it’s warm enough tonight I will go looking for the spot again.