ROOM:10.22

Fire

by Terri Greco

I’m out with lanterns

looking for myself

—Emily Dickinson

A week after deciding

to begin psychoanalysis,

after twenty years of silence—

telling myself, I could never

do it— then, finally figuring

finances, logistics, securing

the when, the why, the how,

reaching the fork in the road,

the voice inside, escalating,

Turn Left, Now,

somehow, without thinking,

I microwaved a sandwich,

wrapped in tinfoil

leftover in a container.

When they started, the flames,

I almost couldn’t believe it,

then panicked. Reached, tried

to stop it without a fire-retardant

blanket. The heat engulfed me,

hair and eyebrows, maimed.

Is this how it starts— conflagration,

then char and ashes of shame.

Bibliography and External Links

Terri Greco’s poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Jacar Press, and Main Street Rag. She was the recipient of a James Applewhite Poetry Prize (Honorable Mention, 2020) and an honorable mention in Kakalak (Main Street Rag, 2019). She was a James Applewhite semifinalist (2022). She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Email: terrigreco@gmail.com