What Small Sound by Francesca Bell

Author:Francesca Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636280806
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

through the oaks’ snarled tracery, watching it wane as the sky goes

from rose to pink to pale. It ends up black no matter,

the trees’ outlines engulfed each night

by the dark.

Menopause, Insomnia, News

I flare up and die back down

like the tip of God’s cigarette

glowing in the difficult dark

after a day spent running the world

into the ground. Aleppo, left out

of the cease-fire, blazes,

and Prince overdosed in his elevator,

unable to rise

above the sear of his pain.

Three-year-old twins, untended,

roasted their baby sister in the oven,

and I turn in my bed, dripping

like a pig on a spit, and think of my son

who fell into a ring

of literal fire. In photographs,

his palm smoldered,

a handful of embers. I wept, 1,013 miles away,

when he called, alone

in his dorm, hopped up on morphine and afraid.

When I was ten,

I touched the stove’s element to see if it was hot.

My two fingers, scorched

as a good steak. The worst part of any burn

is the cold—

shivering while what remains chills

like ashes, flicked onto snow.

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