A fire in our house,
nothing to douse it with,
no safe elsewhere to run to.
If I break a window,
outside’s there’s burning too.
No rescue, no escape.
I’m a bomb staring into flames,
preparing to burn
and if possible,
explode, level,
and extinguish this blaze.
It may be all we have.
Looking around
for fellow bombs.
It’s grim,
smoky, hot, hard
to see each other,
but when we do
we nod. We know
more or less what
we are capable of.
We join hands
to make shorter work
of it, hurry it along.