poetandknowit27 Dec 2002

I watched my aunt's apartment complex burn to the ground at Christmastime when I was six. My step-grandfather knocked a candle into a trashcan in the bathroom. That is what started the whole shebang. Some say he did it on purpose. He was an outsider in the family. I think it went on behind backs for years. But he is dead now. I remember sitting on the swings at the little playground there watching the whirl of the fire truck lights and the flames wild twist and turns and families running all over the place and my family and my aunt all crying and hugging each other and praising the lord, which I thought was odd considering the situation, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Unlike this poem.