The
change crowds in chorus, wanting out through the convex glass overhead:
dimes resting foreheads against
quarters, against
pennies that aren't worth much and periodically get thrown away, against
dirty dollars rolled up in stacks of five or six or seven, adding on. And they want out in the world -
and the
matches wearing their
flammable coats want to burn their jackets, send them upwards in a
draft, out through the
tin lid underside sky.
There is not enough air to burn in a world of thick glass, no way to shake out of their jackets and strike. They flap slowly open and closed, whisper cardboard and sulpher, where they sit up
something beautiful on the shelf.
Where she sleeps in her bed, everything else around her not so
neatly collected, everything else around her
escaping and running into each other, like
colors in
art school, getting printed up by her hands and her feet and her hair and panic displaced on possessions... and when the time is right she will roll the change, carry pounds to the bank on her back in the
honey jar, open the honey jar and let enough air into the whispering matchbooks, set the carboard and
sulpher loose, and
set fire to the art school colors out of control across the floor
(
they will burn like streaks of
gasoline on a
lawn,
they will burn like the
oil on water,
they will burn like the turn of a
lighthouse lamp,
like a heart ful of
red air.)
And the world will be grey with the
smoke again,
hot with
floating embers,
they are
whispering up ahead,
the soles of their feet
dirt black and
cracked,
up with the
ashes and
soot.