Bonfire Smoke

The pyre was built

from paper dolls

that called themselves men

egos fashioned

of papier-mâché

thin skin that came apart

when wet.

I fed the embers their names

like struck matches

that curled like paperbacks

on the flickering tangerine tongues.

The blaze asked what I feared most;

I held up a mirror,

so it could see me and itself within it,

and reminded the blue of it

that ash cannot be reduced further.

The smoke grins gray.

I dance with it,

content clarity crackles in white,

wearing soot for eyeliner,

where forgiveness doesn't beg for light,

it accepts,

lays another log,

kissing the dryness of the heat.

and the charred clay that remains

offers new, fertile ground

upon which to begin again.

In the smokey gray that clings

and calls me whole.