Burn Victim
What happened?
I bolt awake, the heat of the fire
Still burning in my brain.
Oh, it was just a dream.
Or was it? I look at my skin,
Realize it’s black and bloody all at once
Cracked, peeling.
I sniff,
The whisper of smoke still in my nose,
My hair.
A tear rolls down my pitted cheek
As I remember, like I always do,
After I wake up.
Reliving that night.
The last thing I remember,
I was
Home, entwined in your arms
(your fingers were entwined, too, in the hair I’m stroking now).
The heat between our bodies
So strong, that I pushed you away;
I regret it now.
(I just wanted a little space.)
Because the heat then became suffocating, consuming,
As you rolled over and said
this wasn’t the same anymore.
I couldn’t breathe.
Soon, I was sweating,
100 degrees and climbing,
as you got up and packed your things
then left the room.
The slam of the front door
Was the catalyst.
My heart was the match,
And I the fuel....
I exploded from the inside out-
The flame ripped me open,
My skin started to blacken and smoulder.
Stop drop and roll?
They never taught us what to do
In a human inferno.
In desperation, I laid there on the bed
You and I shared
My tears nothing
but puffs of smoke
as they fell uselessly upon my skin.
The tears I’m crying now
In the hospital bed
Remembering
Are no more productive...
But my dear friend sitting next to me
Who pulled me out of the flames
Is there to dry them
And to console me
Telling me I still look beautiful
the wounds will heal
And that you aren’t worth them anyway.
I now know what I have to do
once I can leave this place.
Months later,
My burns have closed, now only scars remain.
I walk up the street to the house you and I once shared,
Now only a pile of rubble.
Picking my way through the charred remains of our bedroom,
A curtain scrap there, a chunk of headboard there,
A stray blackened sock,
I stop, and kneel down in the ashes.
I begin to sift through the ashes, the memories, with my finger,
Both erasing the past,
And bringing it to life all at once,
Until I have found it.
A blade of grass.
One.
Standing tall, strong,
And unapologetically green.
In the middle of the ashes,
With the ruins of our life together all around me,
I delicately clean the area around the blade of grass
with my finger, and
I smile.
Copyright © Jessica Walls | Year Posted 2007
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