Wasp.
Your dark silhouette
training a hose trickling
against the flames
just enough to make you stay.
Memories
piling fuel on fear.
I thought,
He's going to die
examined that idea
as if I could prepare myself,
lessen the impact when it came.
But bones know and blood knows
and nerves scream.
In smoke, in heat,
as rain poured inside,
soaking our home with poisoned sweaty smears;
Choked by dread's fatal oxygen
I recalled the summer day
you snatched a wasp
threatening our child,
crushed it in your hand,
as instinct to protect
won over your terror
of stinging insects.
Afterwards,
the tubes and smell and dirt and tears
and platitudes and coughing
and struggling and running and fighting,
and all behind it the whisper,
He's going to die.
And even when the mind knows
it's over now, the danger passed;
my nerves scream,
my bones know and blood knows,
He's going to die.
