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Poem
How to Feel When Your House Burns Down
The home you are raised in is a mother tongue. 
I was four when it was built, an age when innocence
turns river water and all that lives within to blood.
First birthdays and first dances fortify the mantel. 
This home transports milestones, our own vessel
to move us from sidewalk chalk to the attempt to outrun  
 
the stagnancy found only in the debilitation of the long run. 
At seven, I held him in my arms and love upon my tongue. 
Promises danced on my lips and ran rampant on my vessels. 
College funds started in a baby bottle, tiny wishes held in a cent.
I remember grappling with his growth, attempting to mantle
the affinity we pinky promised deep into our own blood.
 
At twelve, my father taught me to dance in the blood 
and glass on the hardwood. Still, I watch his fingers run 
to sow flowers in my mother's hair, her back, mantling, 
the image of infatuation, true love, in our minds. A tongue
of tenderness has our childlike innocence  
giggling and shouting at the inamoratas and the vessel 
 
of devotion in which each of us was vesselled 
into this life. Each of us was born in the fervor of blood, 
so sweet. My mother threaded honey, burned incense, 
and chewed lemon slices whole to hold us near. She ran 
baths of salts and oils, to cleanse the ever growing tongue 
of infernos that caressed, more captivated, our mantel 
 
of consciousness. For many years, we tied sheets to mantels. 
With pillows and blankets, we’d build ourselves a vessel
to a land of fairies and warriors who shared the same tongue. 
Pool noodles became swords. Here we spilled blood, 
convincing ourselves if we were to sprint, leap, run 
fast enough we too could fly amongst the rest, innocent
 
to the world around us. At nineteen, I watch the innocence 
leave our home. Adolescent memories that kiss the mantel 
turn to sharp licks in the wild fire that is running 
through the bones of our sweltering home, the vessel 
of affinities, dances, compassion, imagination, and the blood 
that connects it all, now lapped up with tongues, 
 
too heavy for the innocent, a cancerous burn in our vessels.
The mantle of snow is no relief to the flames that drip like blood.
And still, we do not run, we wait for the final lick of a mother's tongue.
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