I never saw you;
you are something gone.
Fire that took down my childhood,
You set ablaze that old house,
Steps of stone,
Dark alleyway, refuge of rats,
bigger than the petal-like hands
of the two-year-old me.
You broke down the wooden stairs
into bits and ashes,
I tumbled down them, once, twice.
I tumbled, like a soda bottle.
In one night, you avenged me,
my fall. My childhood.
I would have never gone back there anyway.
But it is a presence,
A landmark,
A symbol
Of my first two years and my first two thousand steps
On this world.
I never saw you.
Were you red, orange, black?
Did your fumes reach the black-blue skies?
Did you cry,
when you saw a part of me crumble into dust,
to the ground?