by Dana Wall
The stove is never off. Even when I’ve checked it seventeen times, even when my fingertips memorize the cold metal of each knob turned to OFF, even when I take photos with my phone (which I stopped doing after I realized photos can lie, after I understood time can pass between shutter clicks and now, after I learned documentation is just another way to doubt).
Here is what I know: At 3:47 AM, my daughter’s ceiling glows orange. The smoke detector never chirps its warning because I imagined that too – or did I? The flames start small, democratic. They take her stuffed giraffe first (the left ear, then the right), then her science project on photosynthesis (irony: the paper burns green), then her sleeping breath.
I know the exact temperature at which human hair ignites. I know how long it takes smoke to reach the second floor. I know my son sleeps through sirens. I know all of this has already happened, is happening, will happen because I left the stove on.
(Did I?)
The firefighters will say electrical. They’ll say faulty wiring. They’ll say accident. But I’ll know – the way mothers always know – that it was the blue flame I thought I turned off, thought I checked, thought I verified. The maybe-flame that’s burning my children right now as I stand in the kitchen at 3:47 AM, touching each knob again: Front left: off. Back left: off. Front right: off. Back right: off.
(But what if they’ve rotated since my last check? What if off isn’t really off? What if physics works differently at night?)
My therapist says these are just thoughts. She doesn’t understand that thoughts are rehearsals. That every night I attend the dress rehearsal of my family’s death, directed by a brain that knows every possible ending except peace.
Some nights I drive to work at 4 AM because the house feels safer empty. But then I remember: empty houses burn too. Empty houses burn faster. Empty houses have no one to smell the smoke.
I keep a ladder under every window. I’ve taught my children to check the doorknobs for heat, to crawl low, to meet at the maple tree. But what if the maple burns too? What if this knowledge burns with them? What if all my preparation is just another way to imagine their deaths in higher definition?
The clock blinks 3:48 AM. The stove is off. (Check again.) The stove is off. (But what about between checks?) The stove is off. (Until it isn’t.)
Tomorrow, my daughter will ask why there are bruises on my fingertips. I’ll tell her I was checking for heat, which is true.
I won’t tell her about the heat that never comes, about the nights I stand guard against ghosts of my own making.
But maybe I’ll also tell her about the love that drives me, that makes my fingers move against the cold knobs, the love that burns hotter than any imagined flame.
Maybe, one day, she’ll understand.
Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood’s agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College’s MFA program. Her work in Bending Genres Journal, Mixed Tape Review, New Verses News, Intrepidus Ink, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, Witcraft, Neither Fish Nor Foul, The Fantastic Other and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.
Emerge Literary Journal 