Jane sank into a chair at the table, enjoying the sensation of her back melting into the curve of the seat. Her senses were alert; her blood picking up speed in its circuit around her body.

 

The kitchen was spotless; no unwiped fingerprints on the stainless steel appliances, no unattended-to crumbs on the plank floor. The rhythmic thump-thump of clothes tumbling in the dryer in the mud room made the house feel womb-like.

 

Lemon light flooded through the window, painting an oblong shadow on the table. For a moment Jane tried to remember the name of that shape, was it a trapezoid? A rhombus?

 

Jane became aware of her heart beating harder, her skin warming. She pulled the pad of note paper toward her and finally, finally allowed herself to write the words. She wrote them slowly and carefully; savoring each as though she was melting a square of chocolate between the roof of her mouth and her tongue.

 

Conflagration

 

Smolder

 

Heat

 

Ashes

 

Flame

 

Cremate

 

Burn

 

And, of course, fire.

 

She wrote fire over and over at the bottom of the page, the final e connected to the next f, so that the words blended together as they travelled across the page: firefirefirefirefirefirefire.

 

As Jane wrote she decided how each word felt, just as she did during sex when Mark kissed her experimentally in different places on her body. Do you like this? How about this?

 

Conflagration was good but burn made her shiver with the tension building inside her. Burn was a word that wanted out, wanted to cannon its way into the world.

 

Her skin tingled and Jane felt her body temperature drop into goose bumps as she picked up the box of matches. Larger than a pack of cigarettes, the cardboard box was blue and red; "Strike-On-Box Matches – 250 count" printed in large white letters, scorch marks on both strike plates. Jane forced herself to wait, to let the anticipation build until her body shook with it.

 

She slid the box open and looked at the jumble of matches inside. Pale wooden sticks about two inches long, red tips, a subtle sulfur smell. Jane stirred the matches lightly with one finger. They made a pleasing sound, like the whisper of a wind chime.

 

Then she dumped the matches onto the table in a pile. One by one, she struck them alight. While they burned, Jane held them between thumb and pointer finger, watching the flame and the blackening curl of the tip. With each match she waited a fraction of a second longer before blowing out the small orange ogee of light.

 

As each flame ignited, Jane inhaled the snake of smoke the match emitted. She imagined filling her lungs, one tiny stream at a time until there was no air inside her, only smoke.

 

When she was finished, Jane swept the burnt remains of the matches back into the box with the side of her hand, a smear of ash marking the edge of her palm like charcoal. She closed the box and returned it to the kitchen drawer, spent now; her body floating in lower-than-normal gravity.

 

"Mommy?"

 

Jane turned at the voice of her younger daughter, Vivi. Her girls came into the kitchen, ponytails swinging; a tumble of backpacks, sweaters, loose papers and books.

 

"Home already?" said Jane.