WHEN I DIED BY FIRE by Scott Beal
my children knew I was the kind of fool who could drop a spark on my coat and wear it burning into the house, fold it over a chair and go on reading as smoke filled the apartment they knew then there was a reason I carried out recycling every afternoon they figured it was me who started the dumpster fire that time the trucks came though face it they must have smelled the smoke on my hands each night I tucked the sheets around their necks and now it was not just me who had burned but the building they slept in half the time half their drawings and laundry and the two chests their grandmother painted now they would live in only one house remember when that was all they wanted
Issue 7 Contents NEXT: Two Poems by Airea D. Matthews