Black Fire

You gave me black fire one day like a fistful of ice and I watched it burn like a storm cloud’s face and I heard it eat the air like a small forest blaze. Carried it about in front of me, banal one moment, all milk and kohl, now dancing henna and shimmer.

It turned into a bird one night when I tried to write, left through the window open to the stars and dissolved.

You wandered in to find the gift ungiven, the sky electric, strange effects in the torrent of rain across the elms outside the window.

I tried to remember when it had been a mere speck flickering on my skin.

Where had you found it?

Bottled on some shelf and stamped with moebius script or moving between the gaps in rotting waste, radio-loud, a siren outside flashing in. Or had you – to tell me something when you were struck dumb once at something I’d said and puzzled at your inability to make words of use to you or us – invented it? And had I failed you once again by losing it?

You listened and I was quiet too, then I found the sound of rainfall softening, heard the hurricane sigh and subside. We stared at a crystalline sky, the houses and the lights of the world all in their proper place, water precipitating gently from the trees.

Where is it now? I asked, but you had noticed something new, the way the moon’s calm light fell sidelong, making the world a magic lantern, your genius moved on.