The Firefighter’s Wife

Waldo Canyon Fire coming into Mountain Shadows

For the Waldo Canyon Fire, Colorado College will host an exhibit of work (poems, photos) commemorating those who endured and volunteered for the fire effort. Here is my (reworked) submission for the exhibit:

The Firefighter’s Wife

I am a car crash
Resounding
Cranked metal twisting

Freshly destroyed
I am not rusted

 

The fury of my hands colliding
Praying
Asking why asking how asking for anything at all because an answer would be better than this
Alone

And yet not

 

It’s not about me
Distorted in shock
In guilt
And yet it must be hidden: shame of undiluted fear for others

 

It was never about me
It’s about children needing me to hold it together
It’s my love on a fiery mountainside as the flame front spreads out tentacles lashing

Torching
Unblinking they fight

Terror packed in back bunker pockets
Secretive

It’s not there

 

Yet how can I tell them he’s safe

When he’s subduing and running and choking on smoke

Soaked

No room for bruises when reassurance is the most important thing

So I lie

To everyone

 

Blackened
Skeleton trees
Ash strewn in the air catching tongues
Catching catching gleaning peaking short

 

The rocks
Scorched but incapable of conducting
A wasted effort
Directed redirected reaching arching
Something more

 

These are the foothills of my young life

These are Jenner

Brogan

Ashton

Still

 

The trauma has passed in the wind wisps faded
Embers blown
Eyes streaming and for what
Nightmares shall pass
Hunger shall return
And this is only part of a sea of restless Colorado summers where yellowed ash

Collects on windshields overnight

 

For certainly we are lucky happy family
Unburned
Unbroken
It is through
Through to color memories of insufficiencies and bittersweet consolation prizes
Certain and savor the notion that we are lucky happy
Unwrecked

Unrusted

Crashing
No longer

 

- Carrie Nyman