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.