Kindle

For the ritual. I am burning to ash in my desperate signaling.
In the distance. A fire burning and a man.  – Chris Abani

We dance in fire’s fulvous city.
Once, at 7, I leapt into the flailing frock of fire;
Ablution in golden libation.
My ash, a mesquite iteration of chaste dust,
Eyes, smithereens of moon Pyrex,
Yards of my beaconed feet, biblical as Sodom
Beneath the coarse current of God’s eye,
Mother perished with me, her bones unstoned,
Said death is always courting us
Till it leaves with us, it too a suitor sojourning
Like the fire with whom I fell in love,
Who crackled a late order to seize fire.
Isn’t this what love does, burn you?
Burn mother, burn your bumble-blue bubble,
Your absent wings. Burn bridges?
Without a single shimmer of flame?
And leaves a note:
If it burns, call it fire.

---

Sarpong-Osei Asamoah @s_Asamoah_