by Lisa Adams–Aumérégie
A cycle of four poems on burns – or how fire asks my body to get itself out of danger.
(I)
My first recurring dreams –
fire
Though I had never seen one
I had seen the aftermath
when triangles-on-squares
no longer have a definite shape
the aftermath –
shards of smoked glass, black limestone,
a sulphurous skeleton of wood and metal,
even blacker
On the verge of falling asleep,
I hear flames roaring
at my door
Sometimes, I tie the sheets together
Or I throw myself into the hedge
The fire already licking at my young toys
Sometimes, the floor gives way
I slip through the cold night unscathed
Bare feet on frost-stamped grass
Sometimes I worry about
f i r e s
On feverish evenings, my mother takes
an illustrated book
The colorful, dog-eared drawings
confiscate my nightmares
English in bubbles
barbituric bla-bla,
lowers my eyelids
I no longer cry out about the invisible fire
(II)
One day, I
s
p
i
l
l
a pot of boiling tea on my thigh
The H2O feeds the fire
On raw flesh, soft blisters
pop like bubble wrap
At the pharmacy, I lift up my shorts
as high as possible to show the burn,
the color and size of a fine apple
Gala-red
Biseptine, osmo gel and spike lavender will apparently repair the skin barrier
A scab forms,
hardened lava on my exploded skin
Crimson, blood orange, brown
My mum asks who did this to me
It was I
The all-engulfing emptiness
I held it so tightly between
the pixelated faces and the books
of my student library
I am hurting,
but I am learning to love
this almost-birthmark,
that appeared twenty-one years later
A sign that my life had finally begun
or the first fire-brand
of work
(III)
Another day, I get up with a taste
of sulphur on my lips
My own ashes cover
the left half of my back
and stomach
A touch and,
on my now brittle flesh,
inflamed blisters
Everywhere, I look for the parasite
that rustled between my coccyx
and my navel
until it gave birth to this constellation
Not at all
It’s a virus, the doctor tells me,
shingles
An eruption of work
through my nerve fibres
Summer is out of breath
I’m working on the release
of a documentary
and finishing my thesis
The forests of Siberia are burning,
and so am I
My body is a Zone to Defend
It orders me to stop,
or else it’ll crack from head to toe
(IV)
A year later, I change jobs
Two months later, I give up work
No smoke without fire
The smoke seeps in through my pores
On my eyelids and hands
little red ants, static –
eczema
I am off for three short days,
vaporized by insomnia
Today, I have to go back to work
The fire alarm drags me out of bed
one hour before my alarm clock
No smoke, no fire
I search the air
for white wisps,
but the threat is not here –
it’s in what awaits me there
My home absorbs
the inflammatory signals of my body
and also sounds the alarm
My boss is burned out, he burned himself out
Why were you off work?
I was sick
Sick with what?
I was sick, thanks for asking
No but with what?
The next day, he yells at me
That’s the way it is, you don’t have a choice
It would take louder shouting
for him to stop,
for it to stop
Instead, I am as soft
as the breath that stirs the embers
I announce my resignation
He yells one last time,
as I turn on my heels –
a stick of fire in my left hand
This article was originally written in French by the author and later translated into English by the European Alternatives team. You can read the original version in the French edition of the journal, available here: https://euroalter.com/about-the-journal/print-editions/