They tied people
I might have loved 
to stakes placed high

on piles of gasolined wood,
bound them with ropes
they bought on my credit.

They set those pyres alight
with bills I handed them 
from my wallet

and when the condemned
screamed, they turned
my music up loud enough

to make it seem 
that the cries of the immolated
were distant,

discordant coincidences
not in the soundtrack
from the start.

I bowed my head 
and looked at my hands;
empty, supplicant,

stinking of
accelerant, blistered
and scarred from heat.

They also held my tears
and though I wept for it all,
though my weeping

should have added
salt to my wounds,
they barely stung;

when I looked up
at the ones tending the pyres,
I saw my hands there.