In the beginning, I was the candle flame
you passed your fingers through, evidence of magic;

father of shadows; an escaped Catholic's
homage to God; your family's proof of good breeding.

My child, because you were born under my sign,
I rewarded your pride in building me, burning

my hottest and brightest in every hearth
or campfire you cared to make. As grassfire

I nearly blinded you to dark, charring your path
through the city of angels. Angel of death,

guardian angel, when I offered the world,
you flattered me, asking only for fire. It was

for you that I cloaked the refineries' stink in fairy lights;
and lit the waves with the neon green of phosphorous,

so even the water seemed to burn.
In my more somber moods, I became the burning ends

of cigarettes in smoky strip joints you might have
danced in, the deadly glare of the smog's

stained, omnipresent body flopped
on the city's disheveled bed, clouding distinctions

between discomfort and pleasure, the consecutive
searing of your first father figure�

daughter, I was your father, your god, and fall.
You fell so willingly, I became greedy; I was so hungry

and you, so combustible. I could have consumed
the world, but I was willing to do anything for you then,

become your housefire, strip and offer you
purified, nude, to a new state. I gave

to you until I was a shadow of myself, smoke
and ashes, the ineffable scent of soot.


You were all you had after the fire,
you and the stairs, all that remained

after weeks of deconstruction, the house
erased like a big mistake, the stairs alone

untouched, seeming to offer themselves up
to the purest kind of climbing, as if the fact

of ascension were more important
than the place ascended to, or as if

you were too slow or short-sighted or the place
too bright or dark to see, as if all along,

the stairs had been saying something
you had to lose the house to hear.



�1998 by April Ossmann
First published by The Spoon River Poetry Review