I. On this day, the world burned
from the outside in — or from the
inside out? — and within this glass
house you called God, we wept
with the knowledge of your
goodness and the inevitability
of our grief. Through your only
window, the glow of orange
embers bathed us, blanketed us,
slowly, surely suffocating us in
quiet darkness until the hazy
memory of childhood campfires
turned into the acrid aftertaste of
manmade devastation. Who
knew wildfires could burn
bodies without ever touching them.
II. Our ancestors said that sometimes
things must be burned to be saved
but I think about how much we burn
in this temple, and I must confess —
I do not know what or who we are
saving or why we are told to save
a body that was lost and not
soothe the soul that is here. This
inferno feels like hell, but maybe
they were right and you are
gold and this will be your
salvation whispered from the
lips of the priest purging you of
pollution that was never yours, and
I want to ask: Who said we needed
to be clean to feel whole?
III. Sontag says we all hold dual citizenship
in the kingdoms of the well and
of the sick, but I think she forgot you
need a key to belong to a kingdom.
You traveled on foot, outrunning fires
from island rainforests to a — this —
concrete jungle that said you could stay
but never gave you a home. And
now this house is the closest thing
to a home and the closest to God
you have ever been, and I turn
to your sister who finally sees you
through the flames the same way
humans don’t believe in disaster until
the sky bleeds orange and they smell
what it means to drown in smoke.
IV. The match was lit many years ago
— Did you know? —We knew
it was too late to extinguish what was,
what would be, what is; too late
to reverse the great flow-path of history.
And so, your bones fractured in the
heat and your tissues cauterized
themselves, leaving microscopic
debris behind while little flames
licked at your heels until they decided
they wanted more; and now your
liver is licking up oxygen as if
it cannot breathe and your fiery
heart is loving itself to death and
the ballad of your breath is
sounding more and more like a prayer.
V. The last words that left your body —
Gracias a Dios, Gracias a Dios —
now inhabit mine the way a migrant
inhabits foreign land: persistently,
uncomfortably, traumatically.
God willing!
Thank God!
Thank God?
What is God or who is God
if God is not this Mother killing you,
liberating you. Thank you!
I look at you, wondering if you too feel
nature’s chokehold on humanity, or if
these flames have always been yours
and we were the foolish ones
thinking they had ever been about us.