he strikes a match
and the first red threads
curl and fasten
to his bedroom door
ripple and rustle
crackle and swell
leaping like creatures
to curtains billowing

like flows of golden hair
as he sinks down into
his burning bed
and the fire sings to him

rude and raucous
as it always has
come crowding
like beloved demons

all around his bed
and soon the roof
will explode collapsing
and he can’t wait

grinning like a strange
and needy child
even as the searing arms
reach around and claim him too

— just like he always wanted —

[Anna Sykora has been an attorney in New York and teacher of English in Germany, where she resides with her patient husband and three enormous Forest Cats.  Writing is her joy, and she’s published hundreds of stories and poems, mostly genre, in the small press.  One unpublished novel concerns the German persecution of witches in the Middle Ages, a topic hardly studied in the Anglosphere…]