Tonight, love looks like burning worms and black smoke. After ravaging leaves all day, the worms are creeping back to the tents they’ve spun that cling like snot globs in the chokecherry. It’s her favorite of their backyard trees, so he flicks his lighter and ignites a spray of Liquid Wrench. A blast of flame shreds the air; the tent is engulfed, evaporates instantly. Worms boil out in a gush, twisting in agony as they fall to the grass.

Before, every August when the chokecherry was flush with red berries, the cedar waxwings could come, twenty at a time sometimes. Her waxwings. Together, they would kick back on the porch at dusk and watch the show. Her, captivated by the feeding frenzy, the beauty of the birds—black mask, red wing dots, tail feathers tipped with yellow. Him captivated by her.

“In the next life, maybe you’ll come back as a chokecherry tree,” he’d said grinning, striking a tree pose with his arms up like branches.

“Maybe you’ll come back as a berry and they’ll eat you.” She smacks her lips at him.

Now their marriage hangs somewhere between failing and failed. Now he compliments her blue toenail polish and gets a look. Says the freckly birthmark like a coffee stain on her hip is sexy and gets a look. In their last counseling session, she told him to quit complimenting her body and looks all the time. Said the only thing she hated about her body was him. He torches another tent. Worms rain down, flaming confetti.

“What are you doing?” her face yells down from a window.

“Saving your tree, for the birds.” He holds up the Liquid Wrench for her to see.

Slow curls of black smoke rise through the chokecherry and right before he sparks another flame and the aerosol can explodes, shredding his face into a slaw of skin and blinding his right eye, he remembers that eve on the porch, thinks I wish I’d said she’d come back as a waxwing. She’d have liked that, that I thought that. That mighta’ been a thing that saved us.