What I Remember
- Mar 31, 2021
- 3 min read
by Kirsten Reneau
I remember useless things, facts that never offer anyone anything. How a giraffe’s heart weighs 25 pounds; that a fire chaser beetle spends its entire life looking for flames; that there are two kinds of lightning—positive and negative. How lightning always becomes before thunder; that is, the crash, the sound of a thousand plates breaking, must come after the light.
I remember the moments I almost died, be it drowning, a semi-trailer not checking the left lane, a man with his hands wrapped around my neck. I remember these things, like most things, in bursts, more in the feeling than the scene; in how suddenly and desperately I wanted to live. How the first breath after I didn’t die always tasted clean and sharp, as if I had swallowed an icicle still hard.
I remember wanting, how my first want was to live; an evolutionary desire grown from the millions of ancestors that had all survived long enough to offer another generation. How I grew to feel want in my body. How it made me hot to the touch. How it felt when I was wanted, how I was certain he would scorch his fingertips off when he entered them inside me. How I felt like the blue center of a fire.
I remember the snow when I was young, the way it made the earth feel quiet and reverent. How going outside felt like going into church. How I once fell and cut my finger open on a ski and after, I sat by the fireplace, watching the flames eat. How I learned fire on a wound can close it off. How later, when I was so sad I thought it would kill me, I went out in the snow in t-shirts, in shorts, how it would turn my nose runny and red and how I would be sick for days after. How I wanted to be sick, then.
I remember how he made me feel sick, then, but no one could see it. How it felt like my insides were turning back and burnt, like the fire in my body was charring my lungs. How I woke up coughing from the chest. I remember his hand over my shirt, under it, skin on skin, the heat of his palm. How I thought I was going to be branded with the imprint of his fingertips on my breast. How I wanted to cry when I found bruises after waking up on his mattress the next morning. I remember the blood between my legs for days after.
I remember all the times I wanted to die after the same way I remember all the times I fell asleep. How it has really all become one collective moment of memory, drawn from the shared pool of memories. How I once saw a thunder snowstorm, watched lightning strike between falling snowflakes. How ridiculous it seemed, that these two things could exist at the same time. How ridiculous it is that I sometimes feel like glass, like shattered fragments of two different people.
I remember useless things: how fire chaser beetles search for flames so they can eat the burnt bark of a tree turned dead. How they cannot smell the smoke, but rather, feel for the heat. I remember how lightning always comes before thunder; that is, the crash must come after the crackling light, blinding, able to burn entire cities to the ground. I remember how it feels to burn.
Kirsten Reneau is currently working on her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of New Orleans. Her work has previously appeared in Trampset, Hobart, The Threepenny Review, and others.
