The Burnt Apartment

Originally posted March 8, 2024.

Photo by Edward Kucherenko on Unsplash

I learned to mourn moments
when my childhood suffocated,
under ashes of bricks and cement
spewed out by the exasperated embers
provoked by a cigarette butt kissing cotton,
like a phoenix made of pearls and chrysoberyl
that never got the chance to surge out of the flames

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