(In honor of Carol Lynn Pearson)

Little Jan held a matchstick
in her small fingers
―lit the wick
her eyes moving
to the fledgling flame
     rivulets of hot wax
     dripping like tears
     against an angel’s cheek.

An adult swatted her hand.
Don’t play with fire, girl!
blowing out
the flickering
light.
 
Jan sat still
watching the wax
grow solid
        (solid like an adult).
 
Now a woman
Jan reads the Memo
from Leadership:
Don’t play with fire, girl!

Her breath becomes incense
dismissing their fear.
Have they not learned?
​
     The trick was never to avoid the flame
     but to give voice to it.
How else could one be reborn
but from heat and
     ash?
 
Whilst Leadership stood
as wax figures
in Madame Tussaud’s museum
of lifelike
     dead―
 
     Stiff.
     Safe.
     Silent.