He burnt the phoenix that morning. He watched it all turn into ash. It was one of the sketches she made for him. She made a sketch for almost every event she considered significant in her life. It was her favorite pastime. It was also her way of telling her story.
Alex met her the last time he visited his parents. They had met at the bus station, boarded the same bus to Lagos and coincidentally sat next to each other. Jane was making sketches most of the time. He tried talking to her without getting much of a response. He would try asking her about her sketches but would be met with rebuff. He wouldn’t give up easily and when he finally pestered her into submission, she would sketch something on a paper and give to him. She had drawn a ferocious looking wasp. Underneath she had scribbled the words—you can’t hold on to me, I’ll sting you.
Alex had laughed out loud. He found it quite funny and even though he couldn’t draw to save his life, he took her pencil and quickly drew something he claimed to be a butterfly. He would also write underneath—because you are graceful, you belong to my garden.
She would laugh in spite of herself. She would later tell him, he was the worst artist she ever knew.
The day they first made love, she would draw two beautiful swans snuggling close to each other on a cardboard and paste it behind his bedroom door. He found it amusing and decided to let it stay.
For his birthday, she drew a strange looking bird.
“It’s the phoenix. That’s what you are” she would say, laughing at his bewildered look.
That night he would search on the internet for the phoenix.
It was a long living bird that would die in flames and rise again from the ashes.
It was beautiful and he would let her talk him into getting a tattoo of it over his chest.
She left him the morning after he proposed at the mall. Alex woke up next to the engagement ring on a pillow.
Underneath the pillow was the drawing of the wasp.