John Biscello

   She is there. She is always there, in the corridor. And she is lonely. This much I know. Lonely as a form of cold that you cannot cover with blankets or insulate against with coats and scarves and such. And you cannot wish it away with a lover, or three lovers, or a dozen. It is a different kind of lonely. This is the lonely that comes from wandering in corridors for too long. From living a life, unconfirmed, in corridors.

   That’s where I found her. Or how. Sometimes where and how are the same thing. She was a gauzy corridor that I had walked through. A corridor at once familiar and unfamiliar, eerie and serene. I traversed the length of this corridor, a length that was relative and subjective, and while I sensed that this corridor connected to another corridor, which connected to other corridors (and there must be rooms which factored into this layout), this corridor held me as a country unto itself. A country with a single inhabitant: her.

   She had long dark hair and was of a slight build. Her back was always turned to me, so I never saw her face. She was wearing clothes, but I couldn’t see them. That is, I knew she had clothes on, but for whatever reason they didn’t visually register. It was like I intuited the fact that she was clothed. Only the long dark hair came through as a concrete visual.

   Here’s how it went, every time: She’d walk to the edge of the corridor—me following her, as if magnetized—and she’d turn the corner, and when I turned the corner I’d find that she was gone. Always, exactly, this way. The walking, the turning, the vanishing.

   Ther was a fireplace in the corridor. Sometimes I’d sit in front of it. I’d sit there and luxuriate in its warmth and make up stories that I would never write down or share with anyone else. They were stories meant to keep me company. I understood the loneliness of the girl with the long dark hair. Wishes can burn your eyes out. In one of the stories, that was the moral: Wishes can burn your eyes out.

   Even so, I always wished to see the girl again, walking along the corridor, turning the corner, disappearing. And I did. Again and again. It was like an infinitely repeating poem or song. I don’t know exactly how many times I saw her—walking, turning the corner, disappearing—before realization, like a crystal spike, was driven through my forehead: The girl didn’t disappear. She became one of the flames in the fireplace.

   This became the fourth movement in the sequence. Or, you could say, there wasn’t really a fourth movement, but a revision of the third. Walking down the corridor, turning the corner, and disappearing via transmutation into one of the flames in the fireplace. This changed my relationship to the situation.

   Now, after she turned the corner, I’d immediately teleport to the fireplace (which was much faster than walking) and I’d see her there, a thin dancing flame, red and gold on the edges and pale blue in the center. She was there, swaying hypnotically, in sync with the concert of flames. She was a note, a precious and necessary note in a ritual score.

   That was how I came to understand that her loneliness was a different kind of loneliness from the different loneliness I had originally attributed to her. Her loneliness was a mystery. And a gateway. Through it, music could enter and seed itself.

   What I still don’t know is if she was a flame that became human, or a human that became a flame. Then again, it doesn’t really matter. What is real, and what is true, aren’t always one and the same thing. And now, when I tell stories in front of the fire, I know that she is there, if not listening, then at least dancing, and the company we keep goes beyond words.