Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down by Anne Valente Read Free Book Online Page B

and the school. I happened to look out the window and saw smoke coming off the roof.”
    Initial examination from fire officials indicates that the fire began on the second floor. The cause is under investigation.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WHAT WAS LOST (OR, EVERYTHING WE IMAGINED)
    PICTURE FRAMES. PHOTO albums. Family portraits, snapshots, matte prints.
    Knit blankets. Embroidery. Pillowcases and sheets.
    Dishes. Wedding china. Flatware. Antique silver, ladles, cutting boards, spoons. Magnets collected from family travels: Nashville. Yellowstone. Bar Harbor, Maine. Sarasota, Myrtle Beach, the Wisconsin Dells, the Grand Canyon.
    A pantry of boxed cereal, dried pasta. Canned tomatoes and beans and beets. A spice rack of cinnamon, curry powder, turmeric, paprika. A refrigerator impervious to burning, left standing and full of half-spoiled milk, plain yogurt, hardened cheese, a half-dozen mottled eggs. Wilting lettuce, jars of mayonnaise and mustard and pickles, apples and potatoes and pears still intact, untouched by flame. Furniture: coffee tables. Couches. The recliner where Caroline watched Merry Melodies after school in fourth grade. Inherited side tables and buffets passed down from grandparents, great-grandparents. Bookcases full of children’s books, reference books, classics of literature, Caroline’s baby book. A catalog of firsts: first smile, first steps, first words ( Mama? Mine? ), first day of preschool. Drapes, curtains, window blinds, doorknobs. Light fixtures and lightbulbs, a crackling hiss as their glass heated and exploded. Ironing board. So manyclothes. Stockings, leggings, wool socks, corduroy pants, jeans, sweatpants, collared shirts, a cacophony of tees gathered from sporting events, thrift stores, marathons, vacations. Sports sweatshirts: Cardinals baseball. Rams football, the team still so new. Knit hats and mittens and gloves, scarves and earmuffs and swimsuits and beach towels. Electronics: a television, a camcorder, family videos, old filmstrips. Caroline’s parents on their wedding day: a brief Super 8 film, one minute and fifty-three seconds long, a film Caroline had seen twice in her life when her father draped a white sheet against a wall and her mother dragged the projector down from the attic. Videos of Caroline: violin recitals, school plays, freshman year Homecoming with her girlfriends, all of them giggling in the thin sunlight of the front yard. A stereo and receiver, two tall speakers, a record player and a six-disk CD changer. A stack of LPs that Caroline’s parents collected through college: the Moody Blues, the Beatles, Elton John, Janis Joplin. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Are You Experienced?, Beggars Banquet, Surrealistic Pillow, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, what Caroline listened to over and over again the year she turned thirteen to find a way to play it backward, to hear the coded messages, to discover in the ridged grooves of spinning vinyl whether Paul McCartney’s death had been wrongly foretold. CDs and cassettes, the first Caroline bought with her own allowance at the end of elementary school. Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton. Albums she hid in a box beneath her bed. Also in boxes: folded notes, movie ticket stubs, bottle caps, blown-out birthday candles, school photos. Diaries with tiny keys, journals of drawings, sketches of teachers and peers and turning maples beyond the classroom window. A miniature box of porcelain kittens, tiny owls, small books, a minuscule gumball machine. A jewelry box: emerald earrings. Collected necklaces. Small pins gathered on family vacations and from childhood, pins ofCabbage Patch Kids and Michael Jackson’s Captain EO. Textbooks wrapped in brown grocery bags. Tarot cards. A Ouija board slid beneath the bed. Posters of movies and Monet paintings and a vintage cover of Catcher in the Rye . Posters adhered to the wall that went up like kindling.

WHERE WE BEGAN
    WE HAVE ARCHIVED so many articles: these, the