1



The night we returned home, burning ashes

floated in air like fireflies. We heard the

sirens ring through the night; school was out,

and we could just make out a red streak

across the highway. Our home was filled

with strangers, and their clothes smelled like

tires, and tears, and metal, and the Diaspora

of neighbors, some homes are only cinders; smoke

clogging our city, like Atlantis underwater,

and our lungs split and torn, until we breathed

the sun. We left as soon as we heard

the phone ring: the tree in our yard was already

aflame, carrot blazes licking cherry autumn leaves.

Fire: beautiful fire, we dance in your light, we

feast in your heat, we pray in your opulence,

we burn in your flames. We burn in your flames.



2



The last thing we left was my parents’ wedding

videotape. When our car was past the mountains,

past the city, past the fire: when we were all but safe,

we heard nuptial harmonies crackle in the flames.  

The night we returned home, we found the

Bible under the rubble, unscathed leather:

we are our brother’s keeper, “Am I?” 

Fire is the wrath of trees; it is the sun’s dooming

gaze, father’s deep unforgiving glaze;

Fire is a red sky, slithering like a snake

through empty streets, until its tail is caught

in its mouth. Endless, it pierces through walls like

soldiers of war—flame, flesh and glass, 

it never loved anyone but itself.