(no subject)
I accept it for what it is
when it burned no one called for help
not even the little girl who was drawing
a picture of dying alone in her mother’s bedroom
the sunlight hasn’t touched any of those rooms since,
and I accept the sacrifice of her warmth and pulse within
No one cried when the fire licked the sills,
and the smoke choked the eaves,
and the girl stood suffused with pallor at the window,
the hand still clutching the crayon that scrawled
resignation, like a stifled tongue, all over the walls
I know now that we are no safer inside than outside,
and sometimes we never escape our own homes.