reclamation

1.

points of light flood

the lens as they sweep across

the heavy grey dark

wraps around itself

in stark relief

i walk closer,

grinding gravel like teeth underfoot

2.

shortly after the flame caught, the smoke

blanketed the whole street

you couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you

it was thick with a hundred years

of love and joy and hatred and sickness

many families had lived and died in that smoke

3.

the house was

built in such a way that it would burn

down, the neighbors were certain

my camera captures nothing:

flames and the trucks’ lights against the night,

but not

the candle that fell on the tattered memories

or the old ship whose planks had been pried apart

and put back together or

the ghost that people said lived there

or anything else that mattered

4.

when the husk was cleared

the lot stayed vacant for years

the pit where the house had stood

grew lush with green

and there, groundhogs raised

happy families in safe burrows

and i laid on the concrete

with stars in my eyes

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