~keep the Home Fires Burning~

You notice the trees seem grown up, so much more than you have; arms are thick, gnarled like they have been force-fed steroids, unlike the used pipe cleaners that hang like wet towels from your shoulders. Recalling the privet hedge that your father loved: shaping bolster boundaries every fourth week, hoping it would dull the world into a soft subtle melody of background music; lying besieged by the rubble of too many feet, too many voyeurs. Terracotta blotched across the portal to your cocoon, split like the moth had already flown, but you were the one who flew, singeing wings in your sense deprived flight; the night never felt as comfortable to you as it folded around your flames. Your life littered amongst the charred past like a melded genetic mistake, teddy morphed into something even your nightmares kept hidden. You know the bubbled paper well its something you see in every shop window, a brand displayed as stigmata. They called you hero; you the one with hidden matches; you the one who craved infamy, still burning.