Spontaneous Combustion
The words sound like fireworks.
You imagine rockets, Catherine wheels,
flames licking the sky.
You think of a colossus,
blackened and crumbling to ash.The truth is: the tiniest fleck
of sawdust, or fiber of cotton
sometimes implodes
from the knock-kneed pressure
of its hydrogen bonds.There's nothing to see.
Previously appeared in The 2River View
