MATCHES IN MY POCKET

1.

I am angry at my hands for failing to erect even 
one dome over a single city. Bombs would go tink
as they bounce off its shiny surface & disappear
into thin air. I am angry at my arms for failing
to reach around the world to carry even one
stretcher with a bleeding teen to doctors who
could save her. I am angry at my lips for failing
to open wide enough to sing siren songs to lull
the sailors of destruction to sleep on the decks
of their fierce ships. I shall rake the brittle leaves
of autumn, build a tall mound of dry dusty bits
in the corner of my yard against the fence,
finger the matches in my pocket, decide
whether to light the whole thing on fire.

2. 

To light the whole thing on fire is to surrender
to old desire. Heat longs for release in bins
of coal. Flame waits impatiently in unlit stacks
of wood. The dragon in the wounded child
is fire banked until she can escape the corner,
reach full height, pack on muscle. She is
the scales we grow to protect our throats,
the talons we nourish so we can rip apart
the thing that frightens us most, the blaze
inside still hot all these long years later.
If I bury the ground in ash, will the pain
I’ve found expire? I’ve seen the men who
drop the bombs. I’ve had coffee with them.
Those men don’t know the answer either.

3.

Those men don’t know the answer either. Who
should we have been after we climbed down
from the trees we were supposed to stay in?
Our big brains think up chocolate cupcakes with
white frosting & sprinkles, The Causeway Bridge
(24 miles long), The Biltmore Mansion (35 bedrooms)
& the street where cardboard is bent with the dent
of a woman’s body found wearing dirty jeans,
two sweaters, a wool coat that once might
have been red, knit gloves under torn mittens.
The first beggar I ever saw was in 1964 outside
the world’s tallest department store—his face
of scars, his eyes opaque, the sidewalk so packed
the sound of people turning away thundered.

4.

The sound of people turning away thundered, but
we all know storms. Tonight the weather sirens
in my neighborhood wail like a train. The rumble
of a funnel, of a freight train bearing down, of air
made green & full of flying shards. Live in Tornado Alley
long enough & you accept the wind as your master.
A straw driven straight into a tree. The house a woman
built with her own hands blown into sticks as if
the wind sought to teach her a lesson in futility.
Should we be angry at our hands for failing to hold
the air back? Like a new widow who realizes 
the hand she most wants to hold has grown cold,
we must find room within ourselves to fall
on our knees & wail.

5.

We must find room within ourselves to fall
on our knees & wail. But I don’t want to.
I want to pretend. I’m the girl in the corner
with blocks, cardboard box, green plastic
Army men. I fought wars with them when
I was 10, lined teddy bears up along the edge
of my bed imagining they’d keep Daddy off me
at night. Have you ever played make-believe
like it’s the oxygen of our life? Built stories
like walls you reinforce daily with fresh lies?
If I let the dam break, will I drown, mouth open,
filled to the brim with feeling? Or will I sink
so far down my toes can touch the ground?
I want to push off, bob up & breathe.

6.

I want to push off, bob up & breathe. One night
The moon’s light catches on cottonwoods quivering.
No one seems to be watching but me. The leaves
exhale quietly. The same night, a woman in scrubs
walks a hospital hall, checks each room, keeps
soft watch over her charges. In an apartment,
a mother bends over a crib & croons lullabies
to the rhythm of her baby’s steady breath. In
a firehouse, the big door rolls up. A paramedic
—eager to help—flips on the ambulance’s siren
presses down the accelerator. Come morning,
the brother of my soul will teach my 4-year-old
to play baseball with a plastic ball & bat. Not one
slap will come out of that man’s mouth.

7.

Not one slap will come out of that man’s mouth.
I want to hold the matches in my pocket & know
what it is I have to do to be like him. I want to find
the room within myself to wail. I want to know
whether the storms in our hearts can ever break
like fevers do. On bombed-out streets, on piles
of debris, on sidewalks where we refuse to look
at people on their cardboard sheets, on beds
in bedrooms where monsters bloom, on
the altar of a child’s dread, we must decide:
Who do we want to be? I am angry at my hands
for being too small to erect even one dome
over a single city. I bless my hands
for wanting to try.  

Diane Silver is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, essayist, and teacher who publishes the Poetry & Life newsletter and podcast at DianeSilver.Substack.com. Her work has appeared in Ms, The Progressive, The Lavender Review, and many other publications. Her books include the Daily Shot of Hope meditation series.