| "What would it feel like for you to burn?" said the man. "Maybe you can guess what it would feel like because your fingers have been burned before by tampering with things you should have kept away from." His was a lecture, fire alarms, smoke alarms, behave yourself, behave yourself for God's sake. He had sweaty armpits and the expression on his face told me he was a lonely man who thought he'd failed in life. Probably wanted to be a fireman when he was a child, grew up and became the sad little man who cruises primary schools, warning children of various household dangers. "Did you play with matches?" (Bad boy, bad boy, smelly fingers, smelly fingers.) Burnt skin smells strong, doesn't it, Mr. Fire-Lecturer. I suppose you don't know, you just read the leaflets and answer the questions. Actually, sir, I've seen the charcoaled corpses dragged out into the front garden from deep within their hell of a home. The smell lingers. The smell of burnt human flesh clung to my hair, when I roll over in bed, my face in the pillow, and I dream of crawling through a field of those blackened bodies. Limbs like an overcooked joint of lamb, skulls like a flaking bone ball of solidified wax, rolled in black earth. So don't lecture me about life, Mr. Authority. You may be older, but your years are different. That's what I should have said, anyway. I suppose he went home, watched some television, And waited for his wife/life to come home. She made him dinner, they didn't speak until in bed he put his arm around her and she rolled away. No children, only vows. She doesn't know why, but she feels she deserves more than this fat, balding man with a dead-end job. Well I say to her, all jobs are dead-end. She expects so much. Sweaty armpits are all we have, they get in the way and in the modern world, serve no purpose. Life is all we have, it gets in the way and in the modern world, serves no purpose. Index 2. |