Patricia Smith Imitation Poem: I Knew This Place

I know this place.

The houses, the searing pavement, the orange sky.
This is home, the one I left for a while, but no less my home.

I pass two neighbor children playing, laughing, running
in between the houses.

The car propels us forward and turns the last right
Home.

Tragedy.

The house next to my own is a shell,
a nasty, screaming, bleeding shell.

The now jagged spires of roof,
black as a smoker’s teeth against the dying sky.

A pile of rubble where a home so similar to mine had been.

So similar.

“What happened”
“Oh, the neighbor’s house burnt down. We almost lost our roof,
but for a neighbor walking her dog in the early morning”

Almost lost.
I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me.
Not a word.

The rage I feel was the flames that licked the side of the bricks,
devouring the roof and supports.

The children I saw running were my brother, my sister,
fleeing for their lives.

The house on fire is mine, and it is burning,
burning alive.

Help them.
The sky is on fire.