Breathing Fire
“Can you breathe?”
the air is asking,
as smoke fills my lungs.
I am crouched under a leaf,
the tears streaming down my face
evaporate before they can form a puddle.
My tree,
my home,
ruined.
But it isn’t my fault!
I didn’t know I could breathe fire.
(2015)
I bought this book called The Practice of Poetry a while back to improve my writing and one of the prompts is an "Intelligence Test" in which you pick out all of the most wrong answers. My favorite question was, "Which of these can you breathe? (fire, miasma, turbine, oxygen, milk?)" This and my subsequent answer inspired my poem.
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