He struck the spark
like flint against boredom,
a brief sun born in his fingers
curiosity wearing the smell of smoke.
“Let’s see,” he murmured,
as if the world were a matchbox
and the donkey a page
waiting to be underlined by fire.
Dry twigs on the animal’s spine
whispered like old paper,
and the wind
that gossiping accomplice
leaned in to listen.
The ember kissed the brittle heap.
A red mouth opened.
Then another.
Tongues of flame rehearsed their alphabet
on a living back.
Hair curled into black commas.
Skin wrote its pain in heat.
The air tasted of resin and panic,
of sap turned to scream.
The donkey bolted
a storm with hooves,
dragging a small sunset behind it.
Fire learned to run,
to breathe,
to climb with hunger.
Its bray tore the sky
a cracked bell
no scripture cared to translate.
And he?
He stepped back,
palms warm with invention,
eyes bright with a child’s experiment
now grown teeth.
He clapped at the spectacle
how beautifully an idea burns
then watched it sprout legs
and refuse his leash.
Distance bloomed between them.
Courage shrank to a sentence.
So he cupped his hands and shouted:
“If you have any sense
to the lake!”
Wisdom, late as dusk,
arrived in a voice carried by ash.
How neat the logic:
ignite the back,
then appoint the burning
as custodian of reason.
He would not touch the truth
it had become a weather.
He could not outrun it
it had learned his pace.
In the wind’s ledger
he scribbled a moral
with a charcoal thumb:
“Reason matters.”
Behind him, the path glittered
with falling cinders
tiny verdicts.
Ahead, the donkey
wrote with muscle and terror,
its shadow a torn banner of light:
fire is not argued with
it is drowned.
But the one who made the sun
carried no water.
Only a voice,
thin as smoke,
offering directions.
May 3
May 3, 2026 at 11:34 PM UTC
He struck the spark
like flint against boredom,
a brief sun born in his fingers
curiosity wearing the smell of smoke.
“Let’s see,” he murmured,
as if the world were a matchbox
and the donkey a page
waiting to be underlined by fire.
Dry twigs on the animal’s spine
whispered like old paper,
and the wind
that gossiping accomplice
leaned in to listen.
The ember kissed the brittle heap.
A red mouth opened.
Then another.
Tongues of flame rehearsed their alphabet
on a living back.
Hair curled into black commas.
Skin wrote its pain in heat.
The air tasted of resin and panic,
of sap turned to scream.
The donkey bolted
a storm with hooves,
dragging a small sunset behind it.
Fire learned to run,
to breathe,
to climb with hunger.
Its bray tore the sky
a cracked bell
no scripture cared to translate.
And he?
He stepped back,
palms warm with invention,
eyes bright with a child’s experiment
now grown teeth.
He clapped at the spectacle
how beautifully an idea burns
then watched it sprout legs
and refuse his leash.
Distance bloomed between them.
Courage shrank to a sentence.
So he cupped his hands and shouted:
“If you have any sense
to the lake!”
Wisdom, late as dusk,
arrived in a voice carried by ash.
How neat the logic:
ignite the back,
then appoint the burning
as custodian of reason.
He would not touch the truth
it had become a weather.
He could not outrun it
it had learned his pace.
In the wind’s ledger
he scribbled a moral
with a charcoal thumb:
“Reason matters.”
Behind him, the path glittered
with falling cinders
tiny verdicts.
Ahead, the donkey
wrote with muscle and terror,
its shadow a torn banner of light:
fire is not argued with
it is drowned.
But the one who made the sun
carried no water.
Only a voice,
thin as smoke,
offering directions.
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