I Saw a Painting of a Fire

I saw a painting of a fire. At least, I interpreted it as a fire. Like flames licking pages or the corners of houses. I am looking at my life like Vesuvius on canvas. There’s the dark of the smoke, where my desires hide like kittens. My dreams burst forth out of this darkness in a thousand bluebirds scattering to the sky and I can never quite catch them. They won’t be held in containers of the heart or hands. But desire is Vesuvius; desire is flame, a red burden of hunger that won’t go away. It’s my aversion to the calm, the water, and the stillness of a breeze that keeps this flame going. An unsatisfiable flame that flickers and dares to unravel me and what I’ve made. What is this desire? It’s the thirst to move on to the next thing, then the next, always growing, and always-changing direction. Boredom and stationary are the enemy. Wind and fire carry me to the edges of cliffs, where I can barely hold onto solid footing. Why can’t I be stable? It’s the fear of not doing that ushers a new beginning, a seedling of something beyond reach that I grasp only in my mind. So frequently I am swallowing down the little bluebirds to hide those wild dreams that rise up above the smoke and ash, above the flames and escape from me. Only to have them erupt out, chattering and untamed, to be born in someone else’s treasury.

-S Terry