Tinder

It was the fire that started it.

We were only its tenders, sent

to keep it alive. Nights, we feasted

on its warmth, drinking up the light—

blind to the darkness to come. They told us

the hearth is the heart where the burning lives,

and I wondered then, did we have enough

to burn? There were days,

of course, once the babies came,

no time to chop & stack the wood.

And days of lack, when, frantic to keep it

alive, I’d wildly forage for kindling: dried

leaves, old photographs, my fingers

threading for loose strands of hair. Once

I hammered a tool to keep things alight,

but instead, you found others—

carved from crooked woods, or painted

black to fool the eye. Now the dying

crackle sizzles low. Quite a hollow hush

when there’s nothing left to say,

and the sun has finally sunk,

too heavy for the cracking sky,

and the embers begin to shut their eyes—

tempted into ash.