After the Fire

on return
the house seems bigger
the demarcations
of family life
slumped to a black morass

charcoal gloves spread
from thumb to wrist
you pick through
the warm talcum gives
no resistance

as if this were the natural
state of your things
unnamed, unsided
waiting for your fingers
to form them

This poem appears in


Pass it Along

© Brendan Bonsack
January 2017