Love Burns by Stefani Mead

Love Burns - by Stefani Mead (McCrimmon Award Winner)

Final Draft

My first memory of men involves my father. We were in West Park, a park in a shitty little neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. My memory of that day is in shades of grey, probably because the picture from that day is in shades of grey. The sun is hot and high in the sky. My dad smells good, he always smells good. When I press into his neck I can smell his cologne and the Marlboros that he smokes. The sun burns bright. I soak it all up. When he spins me around, the wind cools my cheeks so nice. I laugh. The trees split the sunshine. I breathe in the sweet summer air and watch the green grass glitter. We start to walk back to Mom’s house. The broken glass sparkles on the sidewalk. I hate that he leaves me. He always leaves me. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. I run. The floor is slick and I fall. My chin burns. I see the blood and scream.
***
My mom and I are kind of like the Gilmore girls. It’s been the two of us forever. She had a boyfriend once named Michael. He was an alcoholic, and he loved hot peppers. She brought peppers home for Michael sometimes, although he didn’t appreciate them. He never appreciated anything she did for him. My mom’s voice is the first thing I notice when I wake up. It’s dark out still, so I know I shouldn’t be awake. But I hear her voice slicing the thick summer air, and she is furious. I can hear Michael; he’s drunk again. She is pacing across the living room and I can see his anger, coming off like heat waves and radiating toward her. She is sweating and her skin glimmers in the lamplight. When she sees that I’m awake, she smiles at me. Her small white teeth so perfectly aligned. She walks through the living room and into the bedroom. I think she’s coming for me, but she passes me and goes into the kitchen. She walks back out with the peppers. She smiles her big smile at me, and hands him the peppers with a soft kiss. “Don’t eat the seeds,” she warns. He laughs at her and pops the peppers into his mouth. I wonder if he’s really that stupid. His face turns red, and then purple. She is laughing at him, and I laugh too. He runs through the living room, through the kitchen and into the backyard. She is crouched over, shaking with laughter. I can hear what must be gallons of alcohol escaping his body. I imagine the liquid roiling out of him like a geyser and sloshing onto the ground.

My mom follows him outside and starts yelling at him. He’s throwing up on our flowers. Finally, he leaves. When she comes back in, she gets in the bed with me. She scoops me up and holds me close to her warm body and says, “It’s just us now.”
***

When I look at the pictures, I can smell the sulfur. I still have the only thing that survived the fire that our landlord set in our garage, a little plaid backpack. It figures we would rent from a pyromaniac. When we get home, I want to set the backpack on fire and see if it really is fireproof. I ask my mom, but she says “not today.” I know she’s tired from work, so I don’t ask more than three times. The landlord is out. Sitting and listening to our conversation, like he always does. He is so nosey.

When I wake up, I’m calm. My skin is sticky from sweat and my pajamas cling to me. I get out of bed and walk to the end of the row house and look at the flames. It’s hard to breathe and I can hear pounding, but I can’t identify the source. I can smell the burn. My mom pulls me away from the backdoor, but I want to stay and watch the fire spread. I can see it crawling to me; it’s dancing on the power lines, headed for the bathroom. Mom stops pulling me and watches it too. She carries me out of the house and gives me to the neighbors. The neighbor makes me a fluffernutter sandwich. I eat it with milk while sitting on the counter. When I’m done, we go back outside, and the sun is rising. The fire is almost put out, there is only the smoke left now. Mom is walking through the garage, looking at her smoldering car. She has ash on her hands and forehead and I think of church. I breathe deep the scent of fire and exhale. Mom is crying silently near the twisted metal thing that was her car. I peek in through the broken window and I see my backpack on the front seat, perfect and unharmed. When I walk out of the garage, our landlord is sitting on the stoop smoking, exhaling the cigarette smoke through his nose like he is one giant fire.

***

When David started stalking me, I wasn’t sure how to react. After a year of being scared, I couldn’t take it anymore. When I get to the courthouse, my head hurts from not sleeping, and my hands are shaking. Walking into the court, I can hear my heart screaming at me. I wonder if everyone else can hear it too. I can see him. His eyes are intense and he burns right through me, like he always has. I wonder if he can see into me, if he can see the fear working through my blood, like sludge. The judge is asking me too many questions, and I can’t keep up. I wonder why she doesn’t ask him anything. My hands are like ice though my clothes are burning my skin. I look at the purple burn scars on my arms and wonder if they were worth it. The judge says that the restraining order we have in place is “more than adequate protection.” I want to scream at her that she’s wrong, and that he’s going to kill me if he gets the chance. The anger spreads through my body and I can feel my fingers again. He smiles at me. When we walk out of the court he is laughing, because he won. I wonder how his fists will feel on my face. And I think of his burning kiss, once mine and now gone forever.

***

I took forensics class in high school. The segment on human decomposition fascinated me. So, when Matt asked me if I thought he should go and see him, I wasn’t sure how to respond. How do you tell a friend that after a week of death his father has no eyes? We are outside the crematorium, and Matt is crying. I want to hug him, but it’s too hot for me to get that close. I feel like I’m on fire. The gardenias next to the door are in full bloom; I can smell their putrid sweet scent. I am imagining Matt’s dad lying on some cold metal table, drained of the warmth that once ran through his veins. I imagine Matt staring down at what once was his father. Untouchable, unbreakable, now broken and discarded. I imagine Matt holding his father’s hand, squeezing the hand and of all the times that hand squeezed back. I feel the searing of my heart and wonder if Matt feels it too. When I look up at him, he is still crying. The tears running down his cheek are mingling with his sweat. The heat spreads from my heart to my head as I begin to cry. I tell Matt not to see his dad. We head back into the crematorium where the air conditioning makes me shiver. I don’t want to die cold and alone. I don’t want to be Matt’s dad.

 

Love Burns - Assignment

user warning: Access denied for user 'webuser'@'localhost' to database 'writing06' query: LOCK TABLES cache_filter WRITE in /htdocs/writing/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 174.

ENC 1102: Paper One Topic and Guidelines

Snapshots: Shaping Your Life Story

In Robert Atwan’s introduction to Chapter 1, “Staging Portraits,” he tells us, “Our life story is not our life but a story, with all the shaping, selectivity, and distortions that the word conveys” (41). For our first paper, we will consider how our life stories have been shaped, and then we will “shape” a small cross section of this story for our peers. Using words as our medium, we will try to construct “snapshots” (captured moments) of select times in our lives. We will create four or five of these mental images—pictures captured in time—to relate a certain characteristic of who we are, a small glimpse of how our lives have been shaped so far.

The research that we will do for this project will be inside our own heads. Think back over the years and decide when you became aware of your surroundings either through books, songs, movies, television shows, furniture, plants, etc. Now create a snapshot, or word description of the moment; use all five senses to convey the reality of the picture to the reader. Then choose three or four more moments when this first awareness was either revised or revoked and give “word snapshots” of these as well. You will create a “collage” of sorts that gives the reader a glimpse of your life. You will shape your story through the selection, depiction, and organization of mental snapshots. Remember who the audience will be: those students sitting in your ENC 1102 classroom. Choose those snapshots that they will be interested in and will want to read.

Feel free to talk with your family and friends to refresh your mind. Also consider that our memories of an event are never exactly as the event occurred, so if you desire, you may wish to embellish your memory by supplying names, places, dates, or details if you can’t remember the specifics.

These snapshots are just that—individual pictures a reader might find in a photo album. You do not need a traditional introduction or conclusion, and you do not need to write transitional sentences between the snapshots. (You might want to section off each snapshot with a subtitle.) Although the snapshots will represent separate moments, a careful reader should be able to discern a logic behind their presentation. In other words, there should be a point to this paper. Chose and organize your moments thoughtfully, so that ultimately the reader understands the point you’re trying to convey about your identify and how it was shaped by, defined by, changed by, in harmony with, or at odds with your environment.
The final draft of this project should be four–six pages in length, submitted in MLA format, and directed toward your peers.

 

Love Burns - Draft 1

Draft I

My first memory ofmen is with my father. We were in West Park, a nice park in a crappy little neighborhood in Allentown, PA. The memory is in shades of grey, probably because the picture I have from that day is grey. My dad took me there so that his friend could get a picture for one ofhis art classes of us. I remember smelling my dad's cologne, the same one he wears today on special occasions, like at my graduation. His hair was long, and it was warm out, his stubbly chin was tickling me so that I was smiling. He was holding me and spinning me in circles, I loved to spin around. The picture is of us with our noses rubbing, and a tree in the background that I was later photographed in for the newspaper. I don't remember the photographer, my dad told me about him later on. I think the photographer was one of his friends who I didn't like, he had a picture in his room of a close up of some porn star's vagina-it made me uncomfortable.ljust remember my dad and the heat. I remember being happy. It makes me miss my dad, especially being that close to him. I cried when he walked me home. When I got into the house, I ran away because I was mad at him for taking me home, I tripped and hit my chin on the slick wood floor; the last thing I remember is the blood.

My mom and I are kind of like the TV show the Gilmore Girls. It's pretty much been the two ofus forever. She's had maybe a handful of boyfriends. The one I remember most from my toddler years is Michael. He was an alcoholic. He was nice though, usually. My mom was always trying to do nice things for him; she was like that with guys when I was young. He loved hot peppers. My mom worked at a nursing home as a cook, and some ofthe guys there bred habanera peppers. My mom took some home for him one night. I remember we weren't allowed to touch them, because they'd bum our skin. I woke up one night, it was dark, and I don't remember the time. My mom and Michael were fighting, he was drunk again. We lived in a row house, on the bottom floor. The bedroom had no door on it, so I could see straight into the little furnished living room. My mom was really pissed at him, she was a recovering drug addict, and she didn't want to be with someone who drank, she couldn't deal with someone else's addiction battle, as well as with her own. I remember her turning around while he was yelling at her, and she smiled at me. It wasn't a happy smile, it was an angry smirk, but I liked it, it made me feel safe. Then she walked through our bedroom, past me, into the kitchen. When she came out, she had the bag of Habaneras in her hand. She told Michael the she had got a present for him. I remember her giving him a really sweet smile, like she had forgiven him. "Don't eat the seeds", she told him. He laughed at her, and said he was a "real man"; he popped the whole Habanera into his mouth. After his face turned purple, he ran past me into the kitchen and out the back door into the little garden my mom and I had growing, it was spring. My mom ran after him and started cursing him for being such an idiot and puking on our flowers, but she was laughing hysterically too. He left after he was done being sick. My mom came into the room and tucked me in. I fell asleep with her holding close to me.

When I look at the pictures, I can still smell the sulfur. I remember waking up, and being very calm. I remember walking to the end of our row house, and looking at the flames. I even remember eating a fluffemutter sandwich at the neighbor's house. I have my backpack still, the only thing left from the fire that our landlord set in our garage. It figures we would rent from a pyromaniac. That man was insane. He was always watching me, and smoking cigarettes on his back stoop. The day I got my backpack he was outside, listening to our conversation. He was nosey too. I was pleading with my mom to let me set my brand new backpack on fire. It was red plaid, and there was an advertisement on it saying that it was fireproof. When she told me no for the third time, I threw it into the car and headed into the house for macaroni and crackers, our typical dinner. When I woke up, it was hard to breathe, and there was some incessant banging going on. I wanted to see the fire so bad, I needed to. So before my mom could stop me, I ran to the back of the kitchen. The fire was enormous; pictures ofit were in the paper the next day, the biggest fire in Allentown in ten years. My mom was scared, her boyfriend was over, he was trying to comfort her, but she's not one to be comforted. I remember her dropping me off at the neighbor's. She made me a sandwich, gave me some milk and wrapped me in blankets. The fire was put out by dawn, and my mom let me go into the garage. She was calm, but I knew she was worried. Both her car and her boyfriend's car were ruined. I knew she was worried about bills, how was she going to get to work, how was she going to pay the rent (to the landlord who set the fire). The police never caught our landlord, but they found evidence that showed that the fire had been on purpose, newspaper remnants and a bottle of gasoline. We had to move because my mom couldn't handle it. That guy was such an asshole.

 

Love Burns - Draft 2

The Men in My Life ..

My fust memory ofmen is with my father. We were in West Park, a nice park in a crappy little neighborhood in Allentown, P A. The memory is in shades ofgrey,probably because the picture I have from that day is grey. My dad took me there so that his friend could get a picture ofus for one ofhis art classes. I remember smelling my dad's cologne, the same one he wears today on special occasions, like at my graduation. His hair was long, and it was warm out. His stubbly chin was tickling me so that I was smiling. He was holding me and spinning me in circles, I loved to spin around. The picture is ofus with our noses rubbing, and a tree in the background that I was later photographed in for the newspaper. I don't remember the photographer from that day with my dad; he told me about him later on. I think the photographer was one of his friends who I didn't like; he had a picture in his room ofa close up ofsome porn star's vagina-it made me uncomfortable. I just remember my dad and the heat. I remember being happy. It makes me miss my dad, especially being that close to him. I cried when he walked me home. When I got into the house, I ran away because I was mad at him for taking me home, I wanted to stay with him forever. I tripped and hit my chin on the slick wood floor; the last thing I remember is the blood.

My mom and I are kind oflike the characters on the TV show Gilmore Girls. It's pretty much been the two ofus forever. She's had maybe a handful ofboyfriends. The one I remember most from my toddler years is Michael. He was an alcoholic. He was nice though, usually. My mom was always trying to do nice things for him; she was like that with guys when I was young. My mom worked at a nursing home as a cook, and some ofthe guys there bred habanera peppers. Michael loved hot peppers. My mom took some home for him one night. I remember we weren't allowed to touch them,because they'd bum our skin 1 woke up one night, it was dark, and I don't remember the time. My mom and Michael were fightiPg, lte was drunk again. We lived in a row house, on the bottom floor. The bedroom had no door 011 it, so I could see straight into the little furnished living room. My mom was really pissed at him, she was a recovering drug addict, and she didn't want to be with someone who drank, she couldn't deal with someone else's addiction battle, as well as with her own. I remember her turning around while he was yelling at her, and she smiled at me. Her smile told me that everything was going to be okay, for us at least. Then she walked through our bedroom, past me, into the kitchen. When she came out, she had the bag ofHabaneras in her hand. She told Michael the she had got a present for him. I remember her giving him a real sweet smile, like she had forgiven him. "Don't eat the seeds", she told him. He laughed at her, and said he was a "real man"; he popped the whole Habanera into his mouth. After his face turned purple, he ran past me into the kitchen and out the back door into the little garden my mom and I had growing, it was spring. My mom ran after him and started cursing him for being such an idiot and puking on our flowers, but she was laughing hysterically too. He left after he
was done being sick. My mom came into the room and tucked me in. I fell asleep with her holding close to me.

When I look at the pictures, I can still smell the sulfur. I remember waking up, and being very calm. I remember walking to the end ofour row house, and looking at the flames. I even remember eating a fluffemutter sandwich at the neighbor's house. I have my backpack still, the only thing left from the fire that our landlord set in our garage. It figures we would rent from a pyromaniac. That man was insane. He was always watching me, and smoking cigarettes on his back stoop. The day I got my backpack he was outside, listening to our conversation. He was nosey too. I was pleading with my mom to let me set my brand new backpack on fire. It was red plaid, and there was an advertisement on it saying that it was fireproof. When she told me no for the third time, I threw it into the car and headed into the house for macaroni and crackers, our typical dinner. When I woke up, it was hard to breathe, and there was some incessant banging going on. I wanted to see the fire so bad I needed to. So before my mom could stop me, I ran to the back ofthe kitchen. The fire was enormous; pictures ofit were in the paper the next day, the biggest fire in Allentown in ten years. My mom was scared, her boyfriend was over, he was trying to comfort her, but she's not one to be comforted. I remember her dropping me off at the neighbor's. She made me a sandwich, gave me some milk and wrapped me in blankets. The fire was put out by dawn, and my mom let me go into the garage. She was calm, but I knew she was worried. Both her car and her boyfriend's car were ruined. I knew she was worried about bills, how was she going to get to work, how was she going to pay the rent (to the landlord, who set the fire). The police never caught our landlord, but they found evidence that showed that the fire had been on purpose, newspaper remnants and a bottle of gasoline. We moved a few weeks after the fire; our new landlord wasn't a pyromaniac.

I never really thought that my interest in decomposition would ever come in handy. I took forensics pretty much solely for the purpose ofunderstanding how to leave clues, in case I was ever murdered. In the class, we did a segment on decomposition, it was fascinating. When Matt asked me if I thought he should go and see him, I wasn't sure how to respond. How do you tell someone not to view their father, because after a week of being dead, they have no eyes? I think it was one of the worst times in my life, going to do what a grown up should be doing, but Matt's mom has always been useless, so he and I went. We left about a week after graduation to go to Matt's dad's house. Things had been falling apart lately with him and his mom, and when his dad didn't show up for graduation we weren't that surprised, we knew he was going to get drunk and miss his flight anyway. When we went down to Ft .Myers, I didn't know how to feel. I had only met the man once, and he was drunk, passed out naked on the couch. Matt cried when we visited him that time, but not when he died, I'm not sure why, he just kinda sat there on the couch when Rick told us. When Rick offered him a shot, Matt flinched. Rick has always been an idiot though. Who the hell gives a kid a shot, when his father is an alcoholic? I feel mostly the worst about Brittani, Matt's sister. I had to pull her aside and talk to her about her dad being cremated. I was shaking a little. I didn't hug her and I wish I had. I guess I didn't think it would help; it seemed like an empty offering. In Ft. Myers, it was easier, until we got to the cremation home and Matt was asking me about seeing his dad. We went outside to talk about it, to get some privacy. It was so hot out, the flowers were in full bloom, and it made it harder for some reason. The season was so happy, like it was mocking us. I told him it wasn't a good idea to go, I said, "Because Matt, he won't look the same, at all." I think he knew what I meant, although we didn't really discuss it much. He sucked in his breath and we walked back into the home. Months later we found out that his dad died from not having any alcohol in his blood. I guess after he missed Matt's graduation he felt so bad that he decided to go without alcohol completely. Life's funny that way, sometimes you think you're doing the right thing, and then you wind up dead.

 

Love Burns - Draft 3

Third Draft

My first memory of men is with my father. We were in West Park, a nice little park in a shitty little neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. My memory of that day is in shades of grey, probably because the picture from that day is in shades of grey. The sun is hot and high in the sky. My dad smells good, he always smells good. When I press into his neck I can smell his cologne and cigarettes. The sun burns bright. When he spins me around, the wind cools my skin so nice. The trees split the sunshine. We start to walk back to Mom’s house. The green broken glass sparkles on the sidewalk. I hate that he leaves me. He always leaves me. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. I run. The floor is slick and I fall. My chin burns. I see the blood and scream.

My mom and I are kind of like the Gilmore girls. It’s been the two of us forever. She had a boyfriend once named Michael. He was an alcoholic, and he loved hot peppers. My mom and I couldn’t touch the peppers. “They’ll burn your skin,” she says. She brings peppers home for Michael sometimes, although he doesn’t appreciate them. He doesn’t appreciate anything she does for him. My mom’s voice is the first thing I notice when I wake up. It’s dark out still, so I know I shouldn’t be awake. But I hear her voice, and she is furious. I can hear Michael, he’s drunk again, and she’s fighting with him. She is pacing across the living room and I can see his red face glaring at her. When she sees that I’m awake she smiles at me. She walks through the living room and into the bedroom. I think she’s coming for me, but she passes me and goes into the kitchen. When she comes back out, she has the peppers in her hand. She smiles her big smile at me. She hands him the peppers and gives him a kiss. “Don’t eat the seeds,” she warns. He laughs at her and pops the peppers into his mouth. His face turns red, and then purple. She is laughing at him, and I laugh too. He runs through the living room, through the kitchen and into the backyard. My mom is hysterical now. I can hear him throwing up. My mom follows him outside and is yelling at him. He’s throwing up on our flowers. Finally, he leaves. When she comes back in, she holds me close to her warm body and says, “It’s just us now.”

When I look at the pictures, I can still smell the sulfur. I still have the only thing that survived the fire that our landlord set in our garage, a little plaid backpack. It figures we would rent from a pyromaniac. When we get home, I want to set the backpack on fire and see if it really is fireproof. I ask my mom, but she says “not today.” I know she’s tired from work, so I don’t ask more than three times. The landlord is out. Sitting and listening to our conversation, like he always does. He is so nosey.

When I wake up, I’m calm. I walk to the end of the row house and look at the flames. It’s hard to breathe and I can hear pounding. I can smell the burn. My mom pulls me away from the backdoor. I want to stay and watch the fire spread though. I can see it crawling to me; it’s dancing on the power lines, headed for the bathroom. Mom stops pulling me and watches it too. She pulls me out of the house and gives me to the neighbors. The neighbor makes me a fluffernutter sandwich. I eat it with milk while sitting on the counter. When I’m done, we go back outside, and the sun is rising. The fire is almost put out, there is only the smoke left now. Mom is walking through the garage, looking at her smoldering car. I wonder what we’re going to do. I see my backpack in the car, perfect and unharmed. When I walk out of the garage, I can see our landlord sitting on the stoop smoking, exhaling the cigarette smoke through his nose as though he is one giant fire.

I took forensics class in high school. The segment on human decomposition fascinated me. When Matt asked me if I thought he should go and see him, I wasn’t sure how to respond. How do you tell a son that after a week of death his father has no eyes? We are outside the crematorium, and Matt is crying. I want to hug him, but it’s too hot out for me to get that close. I feel like I’m on fire. The flowerpots next to the door are in full bloom; I can smell their sweet scent. I am imagining Matt’s dad lying on some cold metal table, drained of the warmth that once ran through his veins. I imagine Matt staring down at what once was his father. Untouchable, unbreakable, now broken and discarded. I imagine Matt holding his father’s hand, squeezing the hand and of all the times that hand squeezed back. I feel the pain, the searing of my heart and wonder if Matt feels it to. When I look up at him, he is still crying. The tears running down his cheek are mingling with the sweat. I can feel the heat spread from my heart to my head as I begin to cry. I tell Matt not to see his dad. We head back into the crematorium where the air conditioning makes me shiver. I don’t want to die cold and alone, I don’t want to be Matt’s dad.

When David started stalking me, I wasn’t sure how to react. After a year of being scared, I can’t take it anymore. When I got to the courthouse, my head hurt from not sleeping, and my hands were shaking. When we walk into the court, I can hear my heart. I wonder if everyone else can hear it too. At what point does love turn to hate? I can see him. His eyes are intense and he burns right through me, like he always has. I wonder if he can see into me, if he can see my fear. The judge is asking me too many questions, and I can’t keep up. I wonder why she doesn’t ask him anything. My hands are like ice and I feel like my clothes are burning my skin. The judge says that the restraining order we have in place is “more than adequate protection.” I want to scream at her that she’s wrong, and that he’s going to kill me if he gets the chance. I hate her. The anger spreads through my body and I can feel my fingers again. He smiles at me. When we walk out of the court he is laughing, because he won. I wonder how his fists will feel on my face. And I think of his burning kiss, once mine and now gone forever.

 

Love Burns - Process Memo

Process Memo

The essay topic that I was given was to write about snapshots of my life. I wanted my snapshots to characterize how I feel about love and life, but I didn’t want them to be too personal. I chose the 5 that I did because they are very vivid memories, and I see them as times of growth in my life. They aren’t the worst memories or the best memories that I have, they are times when I learned. I wanted to capture the different aspects of my personality while explaining where they come from.

The most challenging thing about writing the essay was writing about Matt’s dad. It was much more difficult for me emotionally to drudge up that memory than I ever imagined. So I tried to use my emotions to tie me to the writing. I’ve been keeping journals of my life for years, so I went back and read them. This helped me to form my writing style. I never like how I write when I know someone is going to read it, so I wrote this pretending no one would read it. This seems to be going against the main writing rule that I’ve learned which is to pay special attention to your audience. But with writing in journals, there are no rules, because it’s just you. And really, that’s all I have to offer.