There is a large red candle lit for the group to use.
But as the oldest, I have been granted permission to use matches.
I unfold the matchbook and select a match. I bend and then tear it from its home. I fold the cover over the other matches and then tuck the cover back in behind the striking surface. I hold the match carefully in my fingers. I brush my thumb up along its length until I feel the thickened end. I place the match’s head against one end of the matchbook’s striking surface.
I drag and press.
I listen and watch for the lightening spark, and I quickly scoot my thumb and fingers down the match’s body to safety.
I breathe deeply of the sulfurous perfume.
I watch as the flame takes shape . . . a tiny billowing madness.
How I love that swollen teardrop of heat.
I know that a match held erect between my fingertips will extinguish itself before it burns to my skin.
I know that a slight tip of my hand offers my skin as further fuel.
I like that control.
I like that choice.
I choose now to quickly put this flame to use.
I reach for the long straight wire, its surface coated with furry metallic gray thickness.
A sparkler.
I hold my lit match against the sparkler’s tip and wait for the explosion.
Fire spits and leaps and dances from the end of my sparkler.
This fire is not as interesting to me.
This fire is manic and garish and filled with the promise of just this moment.
The fire I like is at the tip of the match . . . rounded, sensual, velvet heat . . . filled with the promise of imagined possibilities.
I reluctantly drop the match to the sand below my feet.
As that flame is snuffed out, my attention shifts.
I am a child.
A child on the 4th of July.
I run crazily around the yard, the sand yielding beneath my feet as I race. I twirl the sparkler in loopy circles and zigzags. My brothers and sister race as well.
In the darkness, I cannot see them.
I see only the dancing lights they hold.
I know that they cannot see me.
I am only a dancing light.
We are gone. A part of the darkness. Hidden by illumination.
I stand still as my sparkler dies down, waving it frantically in front of my body to try to keep the light alive.
As it dies, I am revealed to eyes that seek me.
A small girl.
Trying to be smaller.
I watch the shapes of my siblings take form as their lights die.
I watch them run to the red candle and light new sparklers.
I watch as they disappear again behind the searing spitting white-hot light of the celebratory manic fire.
I stand revealed for a moment.
Staring at another light . . . a steadier orange glow in the darkness . . . a slower more deliberate heat.
The light of my father’s cigarette.
I light another match, repeating the ritual as before.
Another tiny billowing madness.
Another swollen teardrop of heat.
I stare at my father’s cigarette.
I breathe deeply of the sulfured air.
And I tip my hand.
