I stared so obsessively that I couldn't even blink my eyes.

It seems to contain infinite hope and strength, full of vitality like it, can be small, can be great, can be a little star, can be an instant fire, can be obscure and quiet and peaceful like a sleeping baby, can be open teeth and claws to wreak havoc like a bloodthirsty demon.

Reach out and feel its temperature. When I was far away, it was warm, as if my mother had gently brushed it, and I was moved; If you get closer, it is blazing, as if it is melting with your lover, which is pleasant; Closer, it was scorching, like a slap on his body when his father was angry, painful, but full of love.

As if I could faintly smell the faint aroma of burnt skin, I observed with great interest, as if the hand placed on the fire was not my own.

"It's time to eat, come quickly, or it will be cold in a while." My mother's voice came from the kitchen, and I realized it was noon. For three hours, I sat on the edge of my bed, facing a small coal stove, reverently.

There are always monotonous two dishes on the dinner table. The fact that the family is in dire straits can be seen from the fact that the family lives in a small bungalow of more than 40 square meters. My father and mother were ordinary manual laborers with no life skills, my father was in his early forties, but he was as old as a man of sixty, and he had to leave the house to clean the streets before four o'clock in the morning, and he would not come back until eight or nine o'clock in the evening, how long had he not sat down together and had a family meal? I don't remember my father's appearance anymore, I don't know if he has a lot of gray hair on his head, I don't know if his hands, which have been cracked in the winter, have started to bleed pus again......

Alas~~ I sat at the table weakly, picked up my bowl, and ate slowly with stewed cabbage and pickled radish strips. My mother seemed to be watching me cautiously out of the corner of her eye, as if she was afraid that I would suddenly throw down the bowl and lose her temper. How can it be? No matter how ignorant I am, I also know that they have given them everything they can for the sake of life and me. The two simple dishes on the table are still the processed goods that the mother bought from the various vegetable fields by enduring the white eyes of others and bargaining for a dime and a dime from various vegetable fields, but even so, the amount is not much, and the mother is not willing to hold more chopsticks, and the father, how many times he returned at night, with a cold body, he can only take hot water to soak in rice, and he has no food.

I pity them. After working hard like an ant all his life, he only left two dilapidated houses in his hometown, a few old people, and in the city, rented and lived in the poorest rental house, living the hardest days and doing the hardest work, but even food and clothing became a problem. After more than ten years of busyness, I looked back and found that there was no home anywhere, and it became an embarrassing sandwich biscuit.

I'm a poor second generation, oh no, if strictly speaking, I don't know that my ancestors have been poor for more than ten generations. This hut, our family of three has been living in for two or three years, the place where we used to live is slightly better than here, at least in the south where there is no heating, the coldest days of winter are not so cold that the water pipes will not freeze and burst, here in winter my mother can only put the larger coal stove next to the water pipes, and would rather huddle in the cold quilt by herself, but say nothing I don't want this at hand.

I wonder if they ever thought about how good it would have been if they had drowned me in the first place, when they gave birth to a son like me. Two years ago, one day after school, I was alone at home, I don't know what I was thinking about the coal stove, even another coal stove at home because it was too close to the rag to lead the fire, at that time the family was small, which was full of things, one by one, soon, the spark swept in the flames, if it wasn't for my mother coming back very timely, I'm afraid I wouldn't be lucky to survive.

But apart from me, my mother couldn't save anything else at home. More than 20,000 yuan in cash savings came to naught, and of course you had to lose money if you burned the landlord's house, and you had to add some money if you had no belongings, plus you also needed a deposit to rent another house, and the already poor days were suddenly stretched.

The biggest expense is the cost of medicine. My left hand, badly burned in the fire, and the other four fingers except my thumb were sticky, curled, and unable to straighten, and until now, after countless expenses, I have lost my basic function, and only the appearance of my hand remains.

Since then, I have been silent, and my mother thinks that I have low self-esteem and regret to become the person I am now. They already knew that in that fire, I played a disgraceful role: in fact, the rag that was ignited on the coal stove was deliberately put on by me, and when the fire started, I stood a meter away, quietly watching the beautiful and dangerous dance of death slowly unfold, watching the little bit of light blue gentle flame gradually release its hideous side, the long tongue of fire scurrying everywhere, extremely chaotic, but extremely harmonious, like Beethoven's Symphony of Destiny, can bring me a shock from the depths of my soul!

I love this feeling so much, I can't take my eyes off it, a little bit to get stronger, a little bit to occupy territory, a little bit, so that people dare not despise it anymore!

It wasn't until my mother's crying voice exploded in my ears that I realized that my left hand was clutching the corner of the rag, and the flames were dancing in my hand, as if to say to me, let me join them and party with them.

My left hand hurts, but I'm happy. After all these years, I still remember the feeling of the flame burning between my hands, it seemed to merge with my flesh and skin, it gave me infinite strength, I could hear its call, and if it weren't for the presence of my mother, I think I would have been willing to go with it.

My mother clearly remembers that she had put the coal stove in a safe place before leaving home, and that there were absolutely no flammable materials around, and combined with the look on her way of seeing me in the fire, with her intuition as a mother and her understanding of her son, I didn't need to explain anything, because it was too pale.

After that, my mother didn't go out to work much, even though the family was in need of money. She began to be with me day and night, and even when I coughed lightly at night, I could hear my mother turn over and sit up next to the improvised plank.

I feel sorry for her. The mother who gave birth to me and raised me broke her heart for me, and she didn't enjoy a day of happiness as a son. This poor woman, the pressure of life has taken away her beauty and health too soon, but she has never been able to take away a heart that loves children.

I didn't want to break her heart, and hearing her sometimes sobbing in the house while carrying someone behind her back was far more torturous than when she pointed at my nose and cried. I was afraid to look into her disappointed and nervous eyes, because those eyes reflected how my life had failed.