Mistress of the Flames

Demetrius used to share with me the heavy work of winterizing. Today while I taped plastic sheets over the windows and whipped weeds and moved bags of birdseed and cat litter (not salt; I have a creek to take care of) and put snow shovels onto the porch and sprayed the locks with graphite, I grieved because he didn't like living, finding humanity grossly corrupt and offensive. He wanted to turn back time to 1956 when he was a child and all was perfect. After he died I cried only once: When the radio played the musical children's tale "Tubby the Tuba" and I knew he would have loved it.

Well, now I am single so I do it all. Single is fine. I do what I want, go where I want, and spend all my money on myself. But it's not like you can ask friends to help you winterize. So I covered the plant beds in drifts of fallen leaves, and cleared the roof, lawn and walkways of fallen and broken limbs and branches, chopped and sawed them if they were too heavy to drag, then dragged them into a pile near the fire bowl. Oh yeah, and I got the stepladder and sprayed the satellite dish with Pam because HughesNet told me it keeps ice from sticking on it. Fortunately it was 56 degrees F, my kind of December 3, and I decided to make my first fire on my own. Before today I'd never had the urge or the heart. Kept bringing it fallen branches and raked-up leaves; it was ravenous for them and the larger the fire the more I was cheered, and began to hear in my mind the lyrics "See the blazing Yule before us," and "heedless of the wind and weather."