The Monument Fire

   by Carol Sanger

I can’t go back
can’t write about it 
the forest open-mouthed 
and still crying after all these weeks. 
My fingers refuse 
to grope the darkness, refuse 
to feel for the charred trunk 
my hands can’t move. I don’t understand 
lifetimes longer than my own so I can’t understand 
what must be dislodged in order to move on. I need 
to breach past and present. 
There was a past.

I do dishes, laundry, 
sort pictures, mend holes 
in clothes I will never wear. 
I live quietly 
while the fog takes shape 
and the trees bleed and bleed 
until they are white. 
I bleed too. I am becoming