Nina Watch the Fire

Arch of green glazed tiles: doorway in the green glazed hearth. A demon of flame rears up, summoned by sacrificial paper (folds, corners, fibres, print — skeleton of ash). The balrog slumps, tired of spitting sparks at the curved metal mesh of the fireguard — kendo mask for a blistered face — and Nina returns her attention to the tower of plastic bricks on the carpet. She favours the tall thin blocks, a single round nock joining each to each. They promise the fastest route to the sky. Half her height, the multicoloured spire flexes, leans — more exciting than the slumbering spirit in the grate, more enchanted with imminent change. And yet. After the coals have been poured from the tall brass jug, gripped by Grandad’s veiny hands. After the embers have flared up and died back down, and their soporific heat, their coal dust smell, has filled the room. After the tower has fallen and been rebuilt and fallen again (study of hubris in yellow, red and blue). After all that Nina turns to watch the fire. Two flames flicker in her lake-blue eyes. Double drumbeat of prehistoric times, of life in caves, the smell of meat, the craft of stones. Nina watch the fire. Millions of years of humanity in the folds of her baby brain. Her lips seem to move — she’s never this quiet or still. Images, sounds, wordless thoughts, emotions she has yet to feel, hardships she never will, grass, water, rocks and wood, every sea and every sky, the peace of food after hunger, warmth after cold — our whole hunted past, crouched in the cave behind her eyes.