Smoke

Memories

were buried

beneath the ash

carpeting Mom’s hardwood

floors and smoke forever

staining this day when

my familiar

was banished to

a parched wasteland with

charred quilts, embered

paperbacks, and soot-nosed

porcelain dolls,

who mourned

singed locks and overlooked

an armored man,

searching

the abyss under

my bed for lost cats,

relief melting

his dread when

the stuffed bear, dusty

pink emerged instead, and

he held my childhood

in his hands—a fragment

I clung to as

I wandered the scorched

halls, displaced,

laboring to unearth

mementos of a past that

was marred by

tenebrosity and

smoke,

hazing the kitchen like

mist as I gazed at

the crater in

the ceiling,

wondering where I would

sleep that night until

the smoke, burning

my throat,

forever staining

memories of this day

became my

familiar.