House Fire

Secrets don’t just sit in closets or

   roll around in attic-bound boxes –

sometimes they sit on the couch with a coffee

cup, lip-stick stained, lukewarm.

Napkins go unpressed as wrinkly eyes

   swim over souls met, now lost:

gone or abandoned.

Fire, out of place, jumped up –

   trickling in to night gray.

Fled confines, some burst, still

   other seeps ashy out heat-cracked windows:

myriads along broken hearted, steaming gutters.

Nothing lasts.

Mysteries may be gloaming

   mirages, smoky off the singed

rolltop where (unpaid) bills stacked up.

No common prophecy uttered

   this unhealing modality – no therapy

found in embers of pillows;

   photos now phantom fringed, a haunting

that cannot be unlived.

A sudden inhalation cut short, crackles

   echoing, and those secrets: diffused

upward or in shards next to the hearth.