Lie down, sweetheart,
he says to me
Sleep, my darling,
you need to rest
But the world is burning--
I hear the broken
sooty voices keening
the once perfectly delicate
naively beautiful things
now melted and shattered
I can smell the memory
of my own hair singeing
my fingers grasping
if someone would have just reach
through the flames
and pulled me through
I never questioned
the weight
I just saw the Nomex
in a pile on the ground
the shape of a tired man
sprawled
so I wriggled into it
and filled its empty sleeves
with body
clomped around in the boots
tilted my head back to
see my reflection from
under the rim of the helmet
and before I knew it
the wildfire
consume everything around me
it had stopped being make believe
and the brief moments of child's play time
with Fischer price walkies
had melted into
armor, molded to my flesh
I can't peel it off
even if I could
how could I?
In those suffering I see
my familiar agony
when no one came for me
My conscience tells me I must keep going
further back in time
to the beginning
reach back and stop
the insult
to keep that hollow look
in my eyes
from ever seeping
into theirs
