Organic mixed media artwork by Kay Sexton
Not Prometheus
Facing a cold room, the fireplace's mouth
hangs open, silent as a cave. Piled beside it,
logs thick as thighs wait to hiss and bloom
under a rolled newspaper's flare.I've just left my husband. I've never started
a fire before. I set to task, stacking naked wood
in the metal grate's claw and striking
a matchstick's red eye against the stone floor.Night wheels by. The wood flickers alive.
Flames, ruddy as a king's beard, grow along
the logs' necks. I feed the fire my half-written
poems (letdowns I never could control).Crumpled pages curl like black flowers.
Ashes break and float like gray confetti.
The fire continues to bite and not bite,
stretching its jaw around a leg of pine.I should feel relief. Our half-written marriage
no longer ends in death. But I can only think
of what this freedom has cost: our early stanzas—
how well we rhymed, so short of foresight,our easy iambic back and forth, before a volta
turned us against each other and dropped me
a thousand miles away, leaning over a dying fire,
fanning embers as they drip neon tears.
