Scintilla

Skin purpled and lips cracked, she trudges onward, little white feet scraping against winter snow. She trudges until she is out of breath and huddles in the crevice between two homes.

She strikes a match. She wants the warmth to swallow her. To crawl inside the place where the fire’s fuzzy feeling drowns out the tongues and hunger that haunt her. She remembers peering through the homes she passed. She remembers the children dressed in red, praying and dancing, their laughter the sound of angels singing. She does not remember the purple-green imprints all over her body.

A shooting star blazes, and she remembers Grandma’s shining face. How Grandma was perfection to her. How Grandma would sing her to sleep at night the way her father never did. She wants to hold Grandma tight in her fist. Her eyes fixated on the glow, she watches the fire burn into wood. She cannot feel the flame grow closer to her hands, heat bursting against her fingertips. She strikes another, and another, but the dead slip through her fingers.

Dear Reader, I want you to believe that in this version of the story, the little girl does not die. That she never gets beaten by her father. That she is smiling again. I want you to remember a little girl, barefoot and shivering, nestled between the warmth of two homes and a dancing fire, shining forever.

This is when you find her. In the cold, you touch her icy hands, and she passes you the matchbox, along with the last match. You take them from her, your fingers trembling. You strike the match; the world flares to life.

—The Editors, Spring 2019