The Burning of Leaves

A short meditation on the nature of desire and being desired.

Every November, just before he thought the snow was coming, my father and I would gather up the leaves scattered over the farm by the old maple trees. Very methodically, we went to each tree, scooping the fallen leaves up in gloved hands. We stuffed them into bags and carried them behind the barn, where we piled them in the old stone fireplace.

My father would make a hollow in the pile of leaves, pushing them into a bowl-like shape. Into this bowl he would put a large pinecone. Then he would take a match out of his jacket pocket and, in that way known to all farmers but kept a secret from the rest of the world, strike it against his fingernail and bring it to life.

Once the match was lit, he cupped it in his hands and knelt by the pile. Touching the match to the pinecone, he would blow softly, encouraging the small fire to take hold. When the pinecone was burning, he carefully placed leaves over it, until the hollow was once again filled in, the pinecone slowly smoldering at its center.

Because pinecones burn very slowly, it took a long time for the fire to work its magic. I could see the smoke crawling out through the spaces in between the leaves and rolling along the ground under the colder air. But the flame itself was invisible.

Still, I knew it was there, slowly burning its way through the pile from the inside, growing in intensity and fury. I waited for that moment I knew would come when, unable to remain beneath its paper-thin yellow-and-brown skin any longer, the fire would roar upward, sending a wave of heat flowing over my face, the remaining leaves collapsing at last into the fire’s heart.

When this happened, I would stare into the very center of the fire, not caring that the heat was burning my skin or that the smoke was stinging my eyes. I thought that if I looked hard enough I might see what the fire had revealed, the part of the leaves that couldn’t be burned away, the thing that made them alive.

 

Many years later, the fall has come again, and the time for the burning of leaves.

When he touches me, I sense the match being struck against my skin, feel the flame spark up and take hold of the edges. As his hands move over me they burn gently, pulling at the first layer of what I have worked so hard to build up. I am surprised at how easily he can make the years fall away, at the strength of his fingers as they strip away the time I have spent avoiding this moment. Although I don’t want to, I touch him, shivering when I realize that I am going to let him do this to me.

His mouth against mine is soft, and there is power behind it. Kissing me, he breathes heat beneath the quiet, cold flame that has been sleeping within me. Awakened, it stirs uneasily in its nest, stretching lazily as it grows stronger. Along with his breath, the fire slips inside my mind and I no longer remember how to get away from him, no longer want to.

Despite the mind-numbing veil of heat I remember that I am playing with fire. Even as his arms encircle me and he pulls me in deeper, I hear my father’s warnings about lighting matches, about the terrible consequences of being too careless. I wonder if this man knows what it is he is doing, or if he even cares. For a moment the fire is pushed back as I am surrounded by the fear that what is happening has not been created by the two of us, that it is, for him, nothing more than a continuation or remembrance of something he has begun in another place with another man. I hold him with my eyes closed, afraid that seeing his face will reveal that he is making love to someone else.

It takes some time to rid myself of this ghost, and it never does go away completely. Still, he is able to close my thoughts off enough to bring me back to where he is, enough to make me want what he is offering me to be the only thing that matters. I cannot see his eyes in the dark, but I listen to what his hands are saying, and I choose to believe them.

Unleashed once more, the flame reaches out, its strength increased by having been kept at bay. I can feel it gripping my heart. It throbs steadily and hungrily, filling me with heat that pushes at my skin from the inside, rolls over my bones in waves. I find myself wondering if he can feel it, too, where his body lies against mine.

I want to pull him down into my body, down through skin and bone and muscle, so that he can know what he has done, so that he can taste the burning ache that he has put there. I want to take his fire into me, feel it rage wildly through me and roar out through my skin, tearing away everything I have buried inside me in a blinding wave of heat and light. His breathing sounds in my head like wind howling through bare branches, blocking out whatever I am thinking. I try to match the rhythm of his heartbeat, try to feel the blood moving through his veins and become part of it.

As he enters me, the fire stirs restlessly. It has waited patiently for too long. The carefully constructed walls that I have used to keep him out begin to tremble as their supports are burned away. For a moment I am terribly afraid, afraid that he will burn away everything I am and leave me with nothing, afraid that I have played a deadly game and lost.

Then the walls begin to collapse. They crash madly through one another, falling away and disappearing into the white-hot center where the fire has been waiting patiently all this time to consume them. The last barrier gone, the flame rushes through what remains of my defenses, and I no longer care what it leaves in its wake because I know that it has cleansed me. It rises up through my skin in a final storm of heat, pouring out and washing the face of the little boy watching the leaves burn.

Through the flames I see him looking down into me, searching for what the burning has revealed.