WRITE THE WORLD REVIEW ARCHIVE

My grandpa’s house rose up
in smoke that domed like psychedelic
mushrooms or dark hot air balloons
towards the horizon, pink as the flames.
It used to be at the edge of the forest.
We think it was a lit cigarette
flicked off the wrist of a driver, racing past,
coughing up puffs from engine and mouth.
It must have fallen on the crisp yellow
grass and dry December weeds
that have seen few drops of rain
since the month of July.
Must have set it ablaze like a witch’s burning
at the stake, after a countdown
of crackling grass blades that inflated
into the roar of witnessing branches.
Witness the cries of the woods and the house.

The walls turned to ash.
The furniture turned to ash.
My grandpa’s only picture from when he was a lad
is somewhere on the ground, turned to ash.
The cold distance that stretched
like melting Antarctica between my house
in Rabat, and Australian woods,
and Californian hells rose like mountains of ash,
flung into my mouth with the weight
of years churning with fuel that
darkened the clouds. The clouds now loom like acid
threats. And even the acid drops
won’t deign to fall on the branch
that the pheasant lost,
on the glade that the toad and cactus lost,
on the voice-filled house, now voiceless
and dead and lost,
on tomorrow's parched up tongue
hanging for a lick of the sky’s offering
like a weary dog waiting for its bad ending.