Burning Like Ice

His brain lit up with the smell of chalk. School chalk. Blackboard chalk in Mrs. Dell's class. Mrs. Dell was standing by the board. It was covered with neat columns of numbers to add up. "They won't add themselves up, Mister." Her voice was like geese. Lost and lonely geese far away, just overhead. He was looking right at them. Their wings flapped, silent as snow.

He was cold. On his back. In snow. Mrs. Dell got mad that day. The chalk squeaked on the blackboard. He cried, but his body was winding down and would sacrifice only one tear. The tear burned like ice. He smelled a blanket. What did a blanket smell like? This one smelled like a fire. Smoky perfume. Sitting under a blanket with Ellen, invisible smoke from the fireplace touching the air around them, communicating with every hidden place.

He couldn't feel his toes. His fingers still burned. Burned like ice. His whole body was crying. A line of geese or airplanes tore through the milky sky. Unzipped it down the middle. A sound like fabric tearing. His head was heavy, but it felt like smoke. He was on his back. He had always been on his back. In the snow. The frozen pond was nearby. He could smell it. He could feel its vibration, the pain of the hole’s raw edges. Or was that his heart? He was being eaten by fire.

A sound like buzzing made him move his eyes. He tried to lick his lips. His tongue was heavy, like some newly dead thing. Mrs. Dell in her blue dress with the white flowers. She told him to sit down and stop wasting the class's time. He got confused, that's all. When the numbers added up to more than ten, he got confused, that's all. Here, in the snow, every time his heart beat, he thought, “And that’s that.”