J.E.M. Miller

The Flames that Lick and Burn

The building was on fire, her eyes affixed quickly, draining them of their early-morning haze.

No. She was on fire—under her skin she felt her nerves pulse, flex almost, it came with a painful searing. She smelled smoke.

No, there was no fire, had been no fire. She closed one eye slowly, then the next letting the darkness behind her eyelids drain into her skull. She gingerly opened them and peered sternly ahead of her at the long Victorian windowsill, forcing her eyes to focus on its violently chipping edges. Placed on it was a bottle of semi-sweet strawberry wine. It had been emptied, four nights ago, when Vanessa had unexpectedly shown up to spend the night. The bottle, once drunk, had been refilled with water from her bathtub; currently, it was filled with various stems and petals she had collected from the community garden below her building. Four red petunias had bloomed in quick succession. She watched the flowers dance, bouncing in a drafty breeze—one of those breezes that rose from the river in those tight little air bubbles that burst on the surface and sped up the roads laying siege to the walls of buildings, a flood of air. Her eyes switched focus without the knowledge of her brain, she now found herself peering beyond the stems and petals—at the building that lay somewhere, out there, in the middle of town. She only had windows on the north and east side of her apartment and therefore could see the building from all the windows in her apartment. She felt in some strange sense that it protected her, that it remained watching over, it made her feel secure. The petals swirling in her blurry foreground paired with her towering sanctuary behind; all the sudden, panic flowed in her mouth like hot bile, making her jaw clamp shut, tense.

The building was on fire. Or wasn’t it? She couldn’t tell; she made an honest attempt to count the petunias. There were four, she remembered four blooming. Or was it four days ago that she stuffed the bottle with flowers? No. She squeezed her eyelids shut. Her building was on fire, she was certain of it. Orange and red plumes fluttered brightly, highly, emphasizing, like a set of smoldering brackets. The brutal crimson colors reached skyward; she could see the invisible heat waves hovering over the blocks between them. Pausing, she listened for sirens, that could tell her for sure. She heard nothing. She strained, hearing the blood flow in her ears, focusing for something, anything—any noise she could use to interpret the building’s state. Nothing came. She slowed her breathing; held her breath. None. Then suddenly a faint something. It was a plane’s engine about to leave the runway, then it morphed. Sounding like the wind, shrieking covering buildings in sound and cold; then it was a toddler screaming. It grew louder, closer. A fly buzzed past her head. It flew around the stems imperceptibly fast, the petals fluttered at the gale-force winds the insect brought about. It slowed and lazily landed its six short legs on a single dark red bloom. She breathed out, not realizing she was holding her breath this entire incident. The fly instantly was consumed in a burst of flame, a plume of smoke. Gone. The building was on fire.




She was on the street. Her “1990, LIVE on tour” bag slung around her shoulder. Underneath the letters peered the stern, stiflingly masculine face of a performer, one not of her time. The bag had begun to crack along the design, veiling the musician’s contemplative expression behind thin faded spider webs. In her tote bag were a couple crumbled bills, her wallet (with no bills), and a Melville novel that had been paused—stopped just before it could get going, on page 34 with a thick black bookmark. She carried it around always, assuming that page 35 was secretly on her schedule each day. That perhaps she would find herself lounging in a park or a café at some point every day. She took this pre-packed bag everywhere with her, it made her feel more official, like a busy academy-trained PhD on her way to a lecture. She stepped west from her apartment and walked a block until she abruptly stopped. She realized she had never actually been to her building before. She didn’t even know what it was used for, she never even considered its own interior life. Looking up, she searched for its peak, looking for a tower among sharp craggy snow-covered mountains—the Pyrenees in her own backyard. She thought she saw it, something familiar, something safe; either way it elicited a response from her. She looked up fondly at the cell boxes attached to the top, attempting to send her own signal amongst the sea of communication all around her. She turned right and followed its response.

Now heading north (it was always the north, wasn’t it?) her mind flicked back to the tower. She pictured papers flying out open windows—burning up to ash before they could reach the ground. People, young businesspeople, all clutching laptops, faces pressed against the glass gasping for air and help, yanking ornate ties off their cotton shirts, attempting to flag down any passerby; all the streets terrifyingly empty, their hot asphalt stretching outward—endlessly. Before she had even completed that thought, she stopped in her tracks. She had no plan. No idea about what she would do upon reaching the building. She would see it burning, possibly hear the people’s screams and be utterly helpless to assist them in any form. She’d have to stand and watch as the tower, her tower smoldered into the dust, a pile of rubble laying in the collapsed frame. It brought poor-quality early 21st century era, grainy photographs of 9/11 to her mind, pictures she’d been shown in school as a child that had struck her aghast. The fear, the sadness, the confusion she had felt then, now crept again up her body, like a serpent tugging at her bones. She quickly checked herself, immediately feeling guilty. That was a tragedy, this was just a fire, she needn’t be worried.

Coming around a corner onto Chelsea Street she paused to lean against a covered entryway, some sort of bank looming high above her, swallowing her in shadow. Initially she felt grateful, happy to be removed from the presence of the August sun. She reached into her bag feeling around for her reusable water bottle oblivious to the fact that it’s currently sitting inside her fridge in her apartment. That was when she spotted him. Two yards away from her, leaning against the opposite wall of the entryway on a step was a man seemingly in his mid-40s sitting on a balled-up blanket. His eyes snap away upon seeing her watching, she notices shame start to dance over his brows causing his forehead to twitch in an attempt to dispel it. Against her instincts she tries not to look, she unconvincingly looks down and with her foot, plays with a crumbled can. It isn’t smart to look, dangerous even. It’s easier to feign ignorance, pull the blinder down over your eyes and go about your day. One by one they’ll start to disappear. Just then there’s a commotion on the street, four car horns blare in unison—one lingers on for an extra second. She uses the moment, like a child caught in the act, to slip to the other side of the road and make a quiet retreat.

Again, guilt wafts over her, she had always blamed her father, who told her and her siblings to keep their eyes down and remain silent when encountering people in need on the street. Beggars” he had called them. He had told them to “take pity” and be grateful for what they had. Her mind trips and tumbles further, first forwards then distinctly backwards; into a memory sometime ago. Morphing out of the blankness of her mind’s canvas, she sees a picnic where a mother and her hungry child had hesitantly meandered to her family’s blanket. She remembered the apologizing, the constant streams of sorry falling from the woman’s mouth. She remembered her parents, fixed firmly in conversation trying their hardest to avoid what was right in front of their eyes, her mother and her slender wrists, bracelets glistening in the sunlight that filtered in, through the branches above, wiping the sweat beading on her father’s forehead. She can see her family, their cube of space, wall extending from the edges of their blankets up—up forever, unable to be crossed. She remembered her sister Marnie, the introverted, sometimes clumsy Marnie, hand reaching up violating that unspoken space, penetrating their barrier—a half-eaten chicken salad sandwich in hand with deadly precision sailing directly into the arms of the little boy.

That was all it took, the little action, like the notes of conspiracy passed. It enraged her father; his family’s space had been disrupted and he knew it. Walls collapsed around them, they could almost hear the crashing. His head snapped to the food in the boys hand, dislodging beads of sweat that hit her mother in the face and left her trembling. The terrible yelling, she heard—that she still could hear—her father chastising Marnie reiterating again and again that “they did not give food to strangers.” Emphasis placed on the not—the forbiddance shaking her. Fear lodged, walled-in within obscenities. She remembered Marnie’s tears trying their hardest to remain a soft, tranquil sea in the basin of her eyes, biting her lip to avoid her mouth opening in fright. The woman muttering “thank you, oh thank you” over and over again until they were out of earshot, turning a corner. She was only eight at the time.

She was looking down at her feet. Step after step, watching her feet rise and fall, bobbing like the sea. The ground looked so far from her now. Her feet, trapped in her size 9 Toms were as small as ants, she was a giant, a moving pillar of fire. If she looked up, she would have been able to see the tower, her tower awash in a portrait of reds, oranges, and yellows.




She had stopped, not entirely sure as to why, at the entrance to an old park. Saint James, or Saint Michael, some ancient figure, famous for his mercy or his charity or a different impossible virtue. She thought it odd that she had never encountered a physical space named after a female saint. She knew they existed, Elizabeth, Agnes, Catherine, Claire, Mary. All canonized, all well known yet for some reason she couldn’t think of any places that were named for them. She assumed because these traits came naturally to women. There had to be more female saints. Maybe all women were already saints, too common an occurrence to name a park after. This thought made her smile, although she didn’t connect the two, she quickly looked around for some source of her newly found happiness. Her eyes alighted on a large acacia tree in the middle of the park. Probably transferred from somewhere terribly dry and out west. It made her feel calm, confident almost. The stone paths bent for the tree, even other residents of nature—the grass, the flowers all dodged out of the tree’s way over its expansive period of growth. She lifted her left arm which, for some reason unbeknownst to her took enormous effort, and laid it to rest on one of the low growing branches. She swept her arm up the branch slowly drinking in the coolness of the wood, its rough bark. She could feel the water stored in the branch, gurgling there patiently. In powerful contrast she felt the sun hot on her hair, so sweltering she thought she could feel her skin blistering. All the sudden the panic reflooded her tranquil shores, she knew she was roasting. Her hair formed an oven and her face was trapped inside, scalding, burning aflame. She yanked her hand off the branch, gasping pulled herself away. When she opened her eyes she was met with a silence only broken by the chirp of a magpie, perched gently next to the bird spikes which she now noticed covering the upper branches. Turning—her panic assuaged for the time being, she pushed past the gate, stopping to see if anyone had seen her. Seeing none she turned left back onto Park Street.




She had lost sight of the building, but she knew now which direction to head, and head she did, following the cracked road. Reaching a traffic light on the intersection of Balcony and Atwood Street she rounded the corner and realigned herself with her building. Her sense of calm returned. This time she noticed smoke in the sky, dark clouds gathering, swirling around the building cascading off the sides as if the very structure itself were preparing to launch into space. She felt her chest tighten; it stopped her in her path, her consciousness floated upwards from the top of her head searching for a better view—just then an ambulance siren exploded on her right jolting her back down into her body. Images struck the front of her mind, her oldest sister, Pearl hugging her to her shoulder, she—covering her ears with her mitted hands, filtering the sound as if her head was stuck in a fish tank. She was crying, or rather she had been crying recently, she could feel the tear streaks on her cheek—fresh and sticky like new paint drying beneath her eyes. Pearl whispering, “it’s ok, you’re ok, shh shh, I’m here.”

Pearl had to leave later that summer, she went to live with their aunt on the coast in a little beach town in a littler beach house, which her aunt had built herself, with the money she earned suffering through a dead-end job writing for a local newspaper. Her house was on the shore but she lived on the water. She fished, caught crabs, hunted in the marsh-beds for oysters and clams and sold them locally at a little fish market on the marina. She recalled her aunt’s nails when she came to pick up Pearl, expertly squared but still with small flecks of mud and grit that remained so ingrained in her person that not even the warmest water could flush out. She had seen Pearl one other time, four years later when she had gone to visit. Pearl had attempted to teach her how to dig up the clams when the tide went out. Her calm voice soothing and instructive, just like that El, don’t let the hole fill in with mud, pull it out with your fingertips there you go!” She remembered walking back to the bungalow, metal bucket in hand with clams knocking against each other, the sound a victorious celebration of her new ability, ringing out over the ever-humming marsh.

She thought she heard a crack and opened her eyes quickly looking around for a crumbled car or shattered glass but she couldn’t see anything, only the tower, closer now than she had remembered. She had lost sight of the ambulance she had heard; she couldn’t remember if she had actually seen the ambulance before but nevertheless it was gone now The only thing standing between her and reaching the building was a busy intersection. It was around 1ish, the time everyone would be returning from their lunchbreaks. She pressed the walk button on the traffic light next to her and hiked up her tote bag around her shoulder. Looking around for any sort of commotion she spotted what seemed to be silent yet flashing lights coming from the courtyard right where her building broke from the ground.

She crossed with haste the moment the beep sounded, ensuring her that no vehicles would hit her on her journey to the other side of the street. She reached the courtyard at the same moment the lights vanished, seemingly to be replaced with twirling and tittering pigeons. She ducked and then looked up at the building, it was so bright that it took her almost a full minute for her eyes to stop watering from the heat and adjust. What she saw rooted her in place.




The building was there same as before, stoic like a monument it stood its ground, throwing itself directly at the sky, almost defiantly. She looked down at her feet, immediately self-conscious, a pigeon suspiciously walked towards her shoes. It had one toe on its left foot, when it came about a half foot from her it looked up at her quizzically with its black marble-like eye. The pigeon cocked its head at her. She stared back, not daring to blink, she might miss it, miss everything. All the sudden she started to smile; she looked back up at the tower only to be met with flames leaping out the side only a story above her. They curled upwards into the air like a halo in a medieval painting. Her smile grew wider still, until she felt her face might bruise, it spread across her cheeks and lit up her eyes. She knew she had to look ridiculous, trying to regain herself, she opened her mouth and sucked in a breath full of air and let it back out. She was giggling, she couldn’t help it, a slight chuckle under her breath. She could feel it in her belly, as if she might explode unless it was let out.

Now she was full on laughing, she couldn’t retain it anymore. A running thought flittered through her mind and tickled her brain. She laughed. She felt joy. Honest joy, something she felt she wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone. It was her secret, her pleasure, her high. She didn’t need to explain it to anyone. She stole one more glance up at the building and in that moment breathed in air, then resumed laughing again just as quick. The world was gorgeous, everything was beautiful. Here she was, uncontrollably laughing in a courtyard of a building that may or may not be burning with a one toed pigeon as her only confidant, and that was life!

She treasured it; each shining second felt like an eternity spent in absolute bliss. This world belonged to everyone, but then again wasn’t she everyone? She breathed the air and felt millions of souls, past, present, and future commune and fill her lungs in this intimate joy and love that she was experiencing. What is the body if not a vessel for love? She opened her mouth and stretched, hands upward feeling infinitely, millions doing the same as her, each by their own burning buildings. The sky filled her lungs and the ground kissed her feet. The building was on fire, no it wasn’t on fire. She saw the building standing there, rigid as a stalagmite pointing directly into the sky; at the same time she saw the same building burning, curling, dancing, crashing downwards and tossing ash up—filling itself with creation. Both were happening, both were existing, she began walking towards the building, her building, attempting to subdue the ticklish feeling inside of her and the joy that was radiating from her.

The building was on fire, she was on fire—no. She was fire.