The Captive Fire

While I was writing the screenplay My Second Simone and developing the stage play Addah Belle’s Pocketwatch, I was consumed with the fires we all go through. I remembered the irony of this old poem I wrote about my mom. I say, “She would give a breast to be needed that way again,” and about a year after I wrote it, she had her left breast removed. I implored her to stop taking me so literally…

The Captive Fire

She tosses the yarn
and the kittens roll with it,
hitting the wall at the
propane heater,
its grill a cage for
the captive fire within.

She lets out a smile
but it swings back to her,
on a pendulum,
like a good smile,
contained in quiet play.

In the span of a sigh
the kittens will leave, cats,
echoes of the children
who fell, men and women,
from her breast.
She would give a breast
to be needed
that way again.

She snatches the yarn
and the kittens
settle for her shoelace
as she finishes the fringe
on her fourth grandson’s afghan.
Muted shades of
red, orange and yellow.

—WT

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