Picking Flowers in a Fire

My husband threw burning matches on my wooden carousel, tossing them one by one like carefully plucked daisy petals. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. He told me he did it because he loves me and no one will love me like he does. I could leave him. You won’t. Smoke and combustion pour from the matches’ sulfuric tip onto the cedar that my father’s hands once crafted so intricately. Still the wheel turned around and around in a rhythmic cylindrical motion. Music poured from its center, barely humming through the screams of crackling flames.

My father built the carousel himself. The man was a lumberjack and a carpenter and really just a jack of all trades when it came to anything in the realm of trees. Throughout the first ten years of my life, he would chop down bestial cedars and oaks which he believed had grown for the purpose of this masterpiece. On a rolling crate he’d bring them in and sand them down by hand until they were covered in a light sheet of pixie dust, smooth and without splinters. He raised his trees as he raised his children. He’d water them enough and watch them grow until they were full-bodied and ready to become something of their own. When they were, he’d rough them up a bit while they were still under the protection of his wing. And with time, they would become more level and complex until they were able to balance on their own, an inimitable, individual creation. 

There’s a difference between a boy and a man that goes beyond age and maturity. It is how a man loves his trees and his people. A boy will burn his wood for heat, but a man will use it to build, and he will treat his people like art.

One time my husband grabbed my triceps, and his grip was loud. My gut caved like I was kicked in the groin, but the blow never came. His grip loosened and he looked at his hands like they were covered in blood. I forgave him because he never hit me, as if he was doing me a service. I wish I had screamed so loud and thrown a fit. I wish I would have. But even then, I was somehow scared of losing him.  

Never once during the time that my father was creating this being did he tell me what it would eventually become. I could not attribute it to anything of similar size or shape and was unable to fathom what his hands were crafting. Under the wooden creature he strung thick coated wires, hanging them as carefully as he’d hang twinkle lights in Christmas time. Along the circumference of the frame, he screwed glossy lightbulbs so that the machine lit up like a lively show. At that point, one could wind the fixture up and watch it spin and play music, but it hadn’t yet come to life. Not until he began carving.

He carved that thing from living trees he cut down from our rich and overgrown forest.

“Why’re you killing the trees, Papa?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring them back to life.”

“But doesn’t it hurt them?”

“It’s called tough love. They don’t know it’s any good for them until they come out stronger.”

His voice was always patient, and over the years, he brought those trees back to life. With his hands he created life. Each evening when the sun had left the sky and dinner had been finished and the dishes had been scrubbed, he’d wander out back and pull the canvas tapestry from his work. With the edge of his knife, he peeled back textured zebras with thick saddles and chipper seals with beach balls balancing atop their noses. Dainty flamingos performed pirouettes while lions fiercely took stance amongst mermaid sleighs. And after he adorned them in all shades of glossy color, my favorite became the tiger, which he painted red. How majestic and strong that being was. Though the carousel moved around a circle, I imagined that all of the animals would always follow him.

Sometimes I think my husband doesn’t love me right because my father loved me as he should. My husband cannot love me in the way that my father did, and for that he is jealous.

The flames spiraled up to the roof of the carousel, twisting around the supporting beams like the crimson ribbons on a candy cane. Smoke rose to the top, where the machine peaked like a circus tent that housed all of its animals. Leading the troop of animals, the tiger was engulfed in fire. She swam in the sea of crimson flames. Somehow, in that moment, my husband’s twisted destruction appeared beautiful. A glowing circus of wild animals and colors on fire.

I sit amongst the ashes holding a broken bouquet of scorpion grasses. Five periwinkle petals surround the golden centers. In Germany people will call these flowers Forget Me Nots. The name stems from a legend that a man and a woman were walking together along the Danube River, surrounded by bushes of these blossoms. When the man went down to pick the flowers for her, the river swept him away. As he floated downstream, he yelled back for her not to forget him. I wondered if the woman ever sought the man out after he was carried away. How could she have ever forgotten him? And wouldn’t it be so painful for her to go on without him, still remembering what was there?

I used to think my husband’s love was tough love. It made me stronger. But oh, how I was so wrong. His love was not tough, it was hard. My husband loved me hard but not enough.

I pluck petals and toss them onto the pile of ashes. My father’s creation of dancing animals had become black and burdened. Destruction was my husband’s form of creation. But still, with flowers, I will decorate these ashes, in all my madness. 

He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me hard.

November 2019