Household Fires

I carried the ride cymbal to the neighbor’s house
like a giant glass of wine only I knew how to drink.

I offered lessons, but was rebuffed.
I walked back across the yard trembling.

Then storm clouds stole the day. My stomach hurt.
The skies bled. The passage of time wrapped me up

and delivered me into winter. The ambulance driver
was reading Harmonium and crying. All his friends had died in a fire, he said.

They probably shouldn’t have died in that fire, he said.

Andrew James Weatherhead was born in Chicago, Illinois and currently lives there.