A Handful of Ash

There is a sound a house makes
when it knows it is dying.

Not the windows exploding.
Not the timbers cracking.
Not the hungry roar of flame.

Something quieter.

A final exhale
as forty years of laughter
collapse into the flames.

The kitchen.
The children's heights pencilled on the doorframe.
The scuff on the floor no one ever fixed.
The chair that was still Dad's
long after Dad was gone.

Flames peel back the paint
like flesh shrinking from a skull's grin.

And at the end of the road,
they stand helpless
and watch a lifetime of yesterdays burn.

Photographs blacken.
Christmas mornings vanish.

A grandmother's letters.
A father's watch.
The chipped blue cup
your child made in Grade 3
and gave to you with both hands
as though it were treasure.

Gone.

Such a small word
for the loss of everything.

Fire does not understand meaning.
It does not know
someone first whispered I love you here.

It does not know
which room held a frightened child
through thunderstorms in the night,

where the dog waited at the window,
or which chair belonged to the dead
and remained theirs
because no one could bear
to sit in it.

Fire has no memory.
So it takes yours.

Across the valley,
the mountains ignite.

SNAP.
CRACKLE.
CRASH.

Ancient trees stand for one impossible moment
wearing crowns of orange,
then fall
into Hell's gaping maw.

The sky disappears.
Smoke strangles the sun
until noon looks like midnight
and the world glows
the colour of a wound.

Deer with charred backs
stagger onto highways.

Big cats climb trees,
but there is no escape.

Somewhere behind a fence,
a horse screams.

And then the wind comes.

God, the wind.

It howls down the valley,
driving the flames before it,
ripping burning pieces of people's lives
and tossing them high into the sky.

a child's drawing,
a page from a book,
a scrap of curtain,
a photograph whose faces
are already disappearing.

Still burning.

Ash falls like grey snow.

It settles on windshields,
on rivers,
on abandoned toys,
on the shoulders of people
who no longer know
where to call home.

They run carrying
whatever their arms can hold:

a coat,
medication,
a photograph,
a terrified cat
clawing at its carrier.

Everything else
is left behind.

One woman keeps saying,

My wedding ring is in the house.

As though saying it enough times
might quell the flames.

As though love itself
might turn around
and go back for it.

No one asks what anyone does for a living.

No one cares what they own.

They ask only:

Did they get out?

Are the children safe?

Have you heard from them?

And finally,
when someone finds the courage...

Is the house still there?

Days later,
they return.

There are no houses.

Only chimneys
standing like gravestones.

Twisted bicycles.
Blackened foundations.

A bathtub
beneath an open sky.

Someone kneels
where the kitchen used to be

and pushes a hand
into the ashes.

They are soft.

That is the horror of it.

How soft
an entire life becomes
after it burns.

Their fingers touch something.

Blue ceramic.
A fragment.
The old chipped cup.

And suddenly
they cannot breathe.

Because this tiny broken thing
is proof.

Proof that before the fire
there was a life here.

There was coffee here.

Children ran barefoot
through sprinklers here.

Someone burned Thanksgiving dinner here.

Dad laughed here.

Birthdays happened here.

Doors slammed here.

Apologies were whispered here.

They fought here.

They forgave here.

They loved here.

They squandered
a thousand ordinary Tuesdays here,

never knowing
ordinary
was another word
for miracle.

Now the mountains are black.
The trees are charred bones.
The road leads to nowhere.

And everything they believed
would always be there

fits inside
one trembling handful of ash.

The fire took the house.
It took the photographs.
The letters.
The trees.
The years.

It took everything
that could be touched.

But it does not get
to take the laughter.

It does not get
to take the love.

It does not get
to decide

what is remembered.