Splitting wood like hairs. Thrown into the fire. It’s hard to make a change. Alabaster eyes and sunken cheeks. Abyss approaches ahead. Hold tight or risk losing your footing. Such smells fill nostrils. Delighted and aching at once. Maritime laws enacted on land. Colliding in mid-air. Collapsing like a lung. It’s hard to make a change. These logs will burn good and long. The air is heavy with smoke. The trails stretch to treetops. Embers crackle and fade. Orange miniature explosions. Ashes float by on a wave or breeze. Eyes red. The bark of a dead birch is singed black, flaking away. Tiny twigs are broken arms and legs. Each pop is an agonizing cry. It’s hard to make a change. Do you see it? See it burning? Losing form and weight and meaning? Its identity is lost among the thin white shards of newspaper used to fan the flames. What are we roasting, you and I? What power have we taken from the fiery pit and claimed ownership of? Looking away is a sign of submission, but that finely chopped wood is silently listening as it is smote. Smoldering hearts torn in twain. We are useless, rendered useless, no hope, no adjustments, no chance to grow a new layer of skin to hide the scars we show to remind us how we too have been burned. Splitting logs on tree trunks for firewood. Come winter, the pines will bend under the weight of frozen rains, sending white powder up into the air as collected flakes hurtle to the ground. Nothing as beautiful as an elm whose arms are wrapped in ice. The chimney is roaring again, as it has all winter long. The shore is silent so the waves crashing perform for empty ballrooms. Nothing hurts so much as a burn. Cold or hot. Sun or snow. Acid or liquid nitrogen. Come hail or high writer, no one escapes the glow. No wood-burning oven can consume the witch. No layers of clothes can conceal the itch. How many more moons to go? We will never again make angels in the dust of snow. Only sunshine and a breeze chasing us up the tallest palm trees. What else can we do with this wood, pray tell? We can split it like hairs or the hearts of broken lovers. It can fuel the roaring engine of a train bound for the coast. It’s hard to make a change.
