Member-only story
An almost philosophical short story about Love, regrets, and cats during Covid
That New Year’s Eve, I and he decided to stay home. We promised that for the next year to come, we would party hard, would blow out all the steam we had in us. But for the moment, we decided to celebrate our first new year’s eve together, on the couch, barely awake, with an eye on the tv and another one already dreaming. And then I felt it, something in me that appeared as a conflict; I was feeling so restless to the point of starting sweating on that cold December night.
- “It is the fireplace… wood is burning too fast, and it’s getting too warm,” I insisted.
- “It is the last night of December. We should celebrate it as it is, let it burn.” He said it peacefully, but strangely that unsettled me even more.
There it was, the last night of something; how could he not feel anxious about us being there and just do nothing but watching that fireplace? “Slow the damn wood from burning, take it out, water the fire,” I thought in asking him. But it seemed that the more I felt to control the flames, the more the logs burned. There was nothing I could do but sit and watch the wood turn into ashes.
-“There you go,” he said, “you’ve got your controlled flames; the wood is slowly dissipating.”
