I woke quite early this morning, wandered into the darkened sunroom, and stood amidst the houseplants there. The snake plants seemed like dusky fingers reaching up toward the sky—a sky still spattered with stars. Almost directly above me, Orion posed in his steady, invariable stance. As a child, I always sought out Orion in the night sky and felt a certain comfort in knowing he was there.
After gazing up at the stars through
the curved glass for a sufficient time, I drifted to the woodstove and touched
off a fire to push the chill from the house. I watched as the flames grasped
and gradually dismantled the splits and ends I had stacked in the firebox last
night as the sunset painted the sky using a palette of orange and red.
Appropriate, I mused, that the same palette used to color sunsets is used to
color fires. I thought also about Desiree, still sleeping in her castle of
pillows.
It’s interesting: one of the
prominent features Desiree envisioned about life in America was the presence of
a fireplace or woodstove in the house—something unnecessary in island life.
This morning, she will wake to find the flames I touched off painting the fire
she always imagined as quintessentially American.
—Mitchell Hegman
