Dress on Fire

By Morgan Hannah, Life & Style Editor

I burned my dress today.
I stripped it off and threw it into the fire
and watched it absorb the fire like cloth absorbs water.
Sitting naked and hugging my knees to my chest, I watched the dress,
all twisted up and warm like an animal, lying amongst the soft grey ashes in the stove.
I watched for a good long while, memory of its long blue body stained faintly
with grease at the thigh
smouldering away.

I like to throw things out often, but this was the first time
I had decided to use the wood stove as an accomplice
to my compulsions.
Before the dress, I had thrown a book into the fire—
Atwood’s Edible Woman.
I didn’t like how Marian allowed her life to unravel
at the hands of those she allowed into her life.
I didn’t like how she seemed to have no life.

When the fire is on, the outside seems a richer, darker green. The trees seem thick and full,
as if they instantly drink in the rain that showers them.
The trees seem to go on for a long while and my scanning eyes stop,
suddenly at the sight of a red rooftop, maybe? One that I do not remember
ever being there before, but it’s such a shade of red—stark against the emerald green,
one would never not have seen it before.
I imagine that I can see the individual tiles,
they’re small and numerous, overlapping each other like scales or microscopic flakes of skin.
California-inspired and sorely out of place
in the dense, Canadian rainforest and lush air.

The air always smells of pine needles, fresh dirt, honey and water.
It’s always colder than I’m used to, and the cold inspires me to wear a wool hat—
tan with large knit in an upwards diagonal direction.
And a sweater
that I imagine would be rather scratchy against bare skin.
I’d want it to be soft and like warm silk, but silk is also cold. I’d need a sweater
made of furry artisan blends—patriotic in nature.

  
That reminds me of hardworking Canadians out in the drizzly mist
pulling in their goods from honour farm stands.
These people have the forest ironed into them.
They’re nitty gritty, used to the cold, tough and versatile.
They work with their hands.
And I am not one of them sitting inside, naked with my knees to my chest.