Game 26

​CHI 102               BRK 105

Jesseman
Came home
To build his mother a bathhouse.

High,
West-facing,
Wine-bottled wall.

So much light.
So much hope.

The opposite of the house beside it--

Neglected shack
In the Texas country
That Mom shared
With her two boys
Too long.

Cracked and leaning.
Struggle and resentment.

And the bathhouse kept growing.
It became a house house--
Spacious and elegant.

He would show me pictures
Proudly.

Doing this for the right reasons--
His mother.
And his big brother.
And himself.

This was a joyous act of redemption.

And then he completed it.

And in a bold symbolic gesture,
He moved anything worth keeping
Into the new house
And grabbed some matches
And a can of gas.

And he walked into his childhood home
One last time.

He hated this place.
Good riddance.

He stood outside,
Warmed and cleansed,
Watching the flames.

But fire is unpredictable--
Or maybe too predictable--
And sometimes flames
Meant for one thing
Do quite another.

I saw him
Right after it happened.
He smelled like smoke
And had soot on his face.

He had the strangest look in his eyes
As he explained it to me.

When the fire started to really roar
He had had a moment--

An oh shit moment.

He ran for the hose
And sprayed a circle
Around the new house.

Horror movie clumsy.

Panicked and useless
Like the last flurry
Of prey
Captured.

And then he relaxed
And found peace.

When inside-of-us fire
Becomes outside-of-us fire--
Actual fire--
Everything changes.

Meaning becomes truth.

And we no longer control it.
Or its symbolism.