The fire followed him to the bedroom. He closed
the door and ripped the curtain down. He opened
the window, the screen, and then the storm, in a
strange, heartbeating calm. The door began to
smoke from top to bottom.
He went to and from the top shelf, picking and
moving giant groups of stories, poems, plays, notes,
travel diaries, essays and horrible
unwritten confessions to the window,
dropping them one story to the sidewalk.
The smoke filled the lungs now; it was not much
different from much of his former life. When he
laid down on the floor, just for a little nap,
pages with his name on them, and parts of his little
life, and the life that no one has lived yet,
floated in the air as people stood looking up:
first at the fire, then at the wind.
© 1992 Daniel X. O'Neil
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