heart on fire

In Indonesia, we wrote letters every week. Green letters, they're called---every missionary writes them, but we wrote one more. One to President, another to each other. Lily and I signed them pulang pergi. There and back again. 

They are funny, they are sad. They are upset, discouraged, fighting, faithful. They are each in an envelope like art; one of them coiled into a BubbleTape container that made the elders laugh out loud. They are (a few of them) perfect fodder for fire.

We've been planning it for months, this Valentine tinder, and tonight was the night. Matches in one pocket and selected sentences in the other. We took the back roads up to the mouth of the mountains and walked our way around to an empty space on the hill. One match, two. Twenty-seven. I love the way flame blooms, how the corners curl and the incandescent amber complements the dusty-blue winter sky in bright petals lipping at the air. It was a silent rite and we burnt the last of them simultaneously, breaking into impenitent laughter as they fell to ashes, gone. It felt good, the way crossing off lists always does, the way new days begin. Lily did cartwheels across the frozen February ground.

We were driving down the canyon into turquoise twilight and I thought, I should blog again.

hi.

[ HAPPY V-DAY. ]