If you live long enough

you can point with clarity to your burn
zone. When I say burn, I mean the years
you were charred

through. When I say charred, I mean there
are people who’ve seen a family member arranged
on a hospital sheet looking like a young, brown

saint after a murder, and those who have
not. A Colorado wildfire burned 120,000 acres

in a day, applauded by mountain winds. Some peaks
still appear naked except if you squint hard enough
it looks like they are covered in dark needles.

Some valleys remain black because the heat
sterilized the soil inches deep. Sometimes levity

is the only way through. Sometimes we are snapped
roots of a fallen tree, gripping soil and large rocks
like some sort of salvation. Sky-side

for the first time and nothing left
to do but laugh through another morning.

Let me explain: yesterday a friend and I snipped
flowers for bouquets, but we grew so greedy
our fists of stems wouldn’t jam into our mason jars.

Later we walked past a man brown with dirt, lying
face-up in the grass, rocking on his back, every finger

interlaced with short branches, which is to say
we’ve all been a felled tree, rolling in a public park

because each grief is so specific it can’t be
shared like how the ring pattern of a tree

belongs only to that tree. What I’m saying is my wedding
ring no longer fits because I’ve swelled so I can meet

my next fire with more grit, how I realized at a dinner party
we talk about our pets as much as we should talk about our children
if they were still living.