box_of_fire_7_mnemonikos raze ( box_of_fire_6_half_awake_fast_asleep ) before she drifted off to sleep, jasmine told me i could read her book if i wanted. i started to ask if she was sure she trusted me to go through her purse, but she was already gone, gliding through her dreams. jim stopped by to grab his keys, looking a little hungover. he grinned when he saw jasmine passed out on the couch. not wanting to wake her, he didn't hang around for long. after he left, i watched her sleep for a while. i could almost guess at what she was dreaming, based on her body language and the way she was murmuring. at one point, she extended her arms as far as they would go and left them that way for a long time, reaching for something that wasn't there. i felt around inside her purse for the book without looking. normally i wouldn't have been comfortable reaching my hand in there at all, but it felt like we'd compressed a few weeks of getting to know each other into one long night that bled into day. if she wanted to let me see what went on inside her head, i wasn't about to argue. i sat down on the floor beside the couch and took a good look at her book. it was tall and bible-thick. the outer shell was hard and smooth, with the appearance of ancient handtooled brown leather. there was a mild aroma to it. something pleasant and difficult to describe. a length of blue ribbon was sewn into the binding to serve as a bookmark. inside, there were hundreds of pages filled with black ink. her handwriting was spidery and unique. these weren't the random scribbled_thoughts she'd told me she was writing; they were memories, thoughts, impressions, hopes, and dreams. they were pieces of her. i can remember small shards of who i was before this place. i remember carl, and how he made me feel, and what happened to him. i remember the way chocolate pudding tasted in a tin. certain smells. the face of the girl who was my best friend in the second grade, before she moved away. having abysmal luck with the opposite sex. vague intimations of anger, confusion, fear, and depression. a few faces and names, and a few puzzle pieces that don't really fit together. jasmine remembered everything. every kaleidoscopic detail of her life. who she was, where she came from, how she got here, and what happened when she'd tried to leave. when the book was closed, from a certain angle it looked like a box. it was a box that contained the heat of a soul still being shaped, seared through countless sheets of acid-free paper. a box of fire. 121229 ... raze i fell asleep while reading without realizing it. it took a while before it hit me that i was dreaming. segments of what i'd read played out in front of me. i watched from the shadows, as if jasmine were one of my subjects. here she's six years old, sitting at the dining room table, drawing a picture of a flooded city. she's an only child. her mother is distant and cold, a homemaker who never wanted to inhabit the role and resents life for thrusting it upon her. her father is a structural ironworker, loving and strong. she wonders how two people so profoundly different, who show no affection for each other, could have ever wanted to build a life together. she examines her father's tools when he's asleep, mystified. she feels the weight of them in her hands. the spud wrench, used for lining up bolt holes. the sleever bars, which look to her young eyes like fossilized paintbrushes. the bull pins, black as coal. the beater, with its laminated hickory handle and its angry face of forged steel. she grows up in roanoke, virginia. her house is a large green side-gabled bungalow. she covers her bedroom walls with her own drawings, using scotch tape to hold them in place. her bedding is purple and white. she spends most nights under her bed with a flashlight, reading, and writing, and drawing the pictures she sees in her mind. she's always dreaming, even when she's awake. here she's eight, about to go outside for recess, when she decides to test one of the shiny metal coat hooks at the back of her classroom, to see if it can support her weight. it breaks off of the wall the moment her feet leave the floor. she looks around to see that no one has noticed. outside, she walks around holding the broken coat hook behind her back, carrying it like a secret, and then finds a place in the schoolyard where the earth is soft and pliable. she digs into the grass and dirt with her fingers. she says a quiet prayer, apologizing to the hook for causing its untimely death, and buries it. here she's thirteen, at her father's funeral, feeling the cold sting of loss for the first time. she doesn't cry. she's somewhere beyond tears. beyond any pain she's ever felt. she moves in with her aunt and uncle, who are kind, supportive people. here she is in high school. she stands apart from everyone else. she's quiet, and wise, always with a sketchbook in her hands. she's viewed by the other students as a wallflower. she likes that description, because it implies both an ability to grow from a place where no life should ever be found, and an in inherent intelligence that prevents her from mingling with the weeds. she shares her first joint and her first kiss outside of a corner store with a shaggy-haired boy who never makes eye contact. she loses her virginity at sixteen, in a sleeping bag, beneath the mill mountain star. the sex is awkward, tender, and neon-lit. here she is at twenty, in art school, trying to reconcile the rules she's being taught to adhere to with a creative spirit that doesn't want to be pinned down. she gets involved with a professor twice her age, wrapped up in the thrill of sneaking around and getting into heated debates with an intellectual she can match blow for blow. the stars in her eyes are rudely snuffed out when he punctuates an argument in his apartment by hitting her, creating the small scar on her face with the serrated silver ring on his hand. she retaliates by slamming a toaster into his face, breaking his nose. she refuses to ever see or speak to him again, in spite of his efforts to apologize. here she is hitchhiking across america, having dropped out of college, feeling a need to wander and find herself without a safety net. she persists, through chaos and hardship, through betrayal, through good love and bad, through everything, never losing hope. an egg hatching in a hurricane. then she meets a man she calls the dream_thief, and i find myself screaming, fighting to wake up. 121230 ... raze corrects a typo (there should be no "in" before "inherent". phooey.) 121230 ... next → box_of_fire_8_a_quickening_of_the_pulse 130127 what's it to you? who go blather from