Burning Was the Way She Breathed
I read a story about a girl
who could turn into a fireball
and the way she breathed was
the same way we do, but some-
-thing deep within her just cracked
and she let all the air in and she couldn’t help
that what came out was smoke.
She couldn’t help it.
With every breath, she was
feeding some apparent
core, and every breath
ignited some
glow inside her,
so bright it had to break her skin.
It had to.
*
This is it, that crack and
I am burning now.
I am stepping through the world.
Any where is answer, but flame is quest and
I am not afraid to unravel
in a mountain
or a meadow
or in sandbars
or at your feet
in a pile of ash,
but this is my map,
and the roads my
ember footprints,
and you
are only
landmark
pressed by
flame
into bones.
*
Kristian Macaron resides in Albuquerque, NM, but is often elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook collection is titled, Storm. Other fiction and poetry publications can be found in The Winter Tangerine Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Medusa’s Laugh Press, The Mantle Poetry, Philadelphia Stories, Gaygoyle Magazine, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. She is a co-founding editor of the literary journal, Manzano Mountain Review. View her work at Kristianmacaron.com