I Only Remember the Smoke

It wasn’t fire—

not at first.

It was the color of syrup left too long in sun,

that gold-thick warning,

a sweetness you feel before it turns.

I was eight or maybe twenty,

and someone was crying in the barn,

but it wasn’t me—not out loud.

There were chickens loose,

barefoot like saints,

and the radio kept stuttering a hymn

none of us knew the words to.

That’s how I know it was real.

Memory’s a liar,

but grief don’t forget the temperature.

I swear the air had teeth—

small ones, childlike.

They nipped at my neck as I ran,

dragging my Sunday dress through the bramble

like I owed the thorns something.

There was a jar on the porch.

Not a firefly jar—

a glass one with peaches floating like lungs.

Someone had buried a gold ring in the bottom.

That was supposed to mean something.

I never found out what.

Mama said it was an accident.

That barns burn,

that radios sputter,

that girls forget things on purpose.

But I remember the smoke.

It curled like handwriting too fast for paper.

It spelled my name

in a language my mouth has since unlearned.

Years later, I found a chicken feather in my Bible.

It wasn’t white.

It was ash-colored, almost blue,

and it hummed when I touched it.

I asked the preacher

if feathers could carry songs.

He said no.

But the church bell rang early that day

and no one pulled the rope.

So tell me—

if the peaches never spoiled,

why does everything still taste like goodbye?

And who was crying in the barn

if not me?