In the great blue fire

covering the city of ghosts

like a well-loved receiving blanket

a wisp of smoke is birthed

from a frigid heat.

What is her name,

this queen of the reaping?

She is a gossamer phantom

with sky ambitions.

While flames whisper through windows,

she skitters in and out of the

bluejay’s lungs,

recycled.

On the fiery airstrip,

the dying plane resembles a tongue.

Her voice is a soft sigh,

a sort of escapism from exhaustion.

The fire climbs through the

ghostly metropolis like a

twisted ivy,

unconscious of her seed rising

to drift elsewhere,

air for a tree in some

distant netherworld

named Living.