“With Hearth & Home, A Phoenix May Rest” by Mariya Kika

With Hearth & Home, a Phoenix May Rest

Some say failure tastes of iron.
He knows better. Failure is cloying ash
coating his tongue, the brittle soot of

burnt dreams and a flammable future.
He rolls the grit of it between his teeth,
spitting out black loss as he

greets his fellow revolutionaries.
They are a flickering existence, dying
embers with neither name nor face,

nor strength nor power. They return
to a home of charred kindle with
nothing but singed fingertips and

a pyre of a roof.
Their future doused in oil,
their leaders holding the match.

They’re left hollow beneath an extinguished
dawn, the revolution a starless night
through which he stumbles in search of light,

fighting against shame’s lingering plume. Rage
still flickering beneath his skin, a match striking
against bone, a slow burn catching in his throat.

Illuminating fine sinew and pulsing carotids.
Cupped palms hug his mouth, warming upon
his hearth. He thinks of tightening the caged

fingers, of choking out the remaining flames of
dreams. Smoke wisps at his hands, coalescing
into tiny fingers, nails clawing into his skin.

He peers through his plume, down into the
hungered gaze of shivering children. His cage
falls away, granting them the comfort of

a hearth. But they carry on, tiny hands reaching
into his throat, pulling out sooty fistfuls of
light, swallowing them whole. It settles

behind hollow ribs, alighting upon their souls.
Their palms blister and their skin peels, just as
their ancestors’ did. But they suckle ash from

fingertips, sleighting matches in oil-slick palms,
striking them against teeth and burning
kisses into the cheeks of tomorrow.

He swallows charred dreams, choking
on the ember seeded within.
It tastes of iron.