Pyromancer’s Confession

Written for Poetics Tuesday: “Beginnings Are Endings”,
hosted by Punam, who has asked us to write a poem,
taking the opening line of a well-known piece and
using it as the last line of our poem. This is my response.

I have always loved the moment just before ….
the way dry timber holds its breath,
how paper curls its edges inward
like a hand closing around a secret
it was never meant to keep.

There is a mathematics to fire:
given enough heat, enough time,
everything confesses what it is.
The oak becomes its carbon.
The letter becomes its truth.

I fed it slowly. Old receipts.
Photographs that made the winters longer.
A name I’d written on a hundred margins
the way the devout repeat a prayer ….
not from faith, but from the need
to fill the silence with something.

By midnight the smoke had softened
and I stood in the warm orbit, thinking:
this is the most honest I have ever been.
To let the useless beautiful things go.
To stand and watch and say with intent….
It was a pleasure to burn.

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: My final line …. “It was a pleasure to burn” …. is from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

This is “Paper In Fire” by John Mellencamp

Poetics Tuesday: Beginnings are Endings

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.