qarrtsiluni

We could fold ourselves into a thousand
paper cranes each nestled snug into the one
child’s bright life spread upon moving waters
out into summer, swans, fireworks bursting
too soon, a flash in the pan of August
that burns out monograms on schoolboy shirts
and leaves alone little girls’ lunchboxes
to witness, as if we would otherwise
forget shadows scorched into a stair
at sunrise, a tricycle crusted black
before a father’s disinterred grief,
dome of bricks resisting fall, finally
to wing perhaps a yellow paper sky
above a flame with no ash to deny.

by Katherine Durham Oldmixon

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