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"The Children Burn Fine"
285Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT0tfGayrLM
In spring's dew-covered embrace, where wildflowers climb to my knees and butterflies
launch from the stems and fly in front of my face.
A trailer stands, worn and white and rusted by time and weather.
The sun blasts me with rays of light and leaves me partially blind.
My Aunt in the distance is cast by a shadow from a tree's overhang.
She was always strange, but today even stranger dancing with a gas can and a blocked front door.
She sang a song I'd never heard before, and she sang in unison with laughter that she mustered.
The children burn fine.
With everything else, I light this fire!
With a heartless desire to see a flame today!
The smoke will alert them
They will die alone with just their screams, I will have a birds-eye view.
They won't know it's me!
They can't see with smoke in their eyes and they will slowly die.
I was only 12 when she did this, she was not in shock in awe of what she's done.
I screamed an acre and a half away, but I was too late my cousins were dead, I heard them cry Mommy help!
The time arrived the crying had stopped and the cops had come, my aunt still laughed and said the children burned fine.
When the fire was put out by the volunteer fire department, nothing but smoldering wood and framing and two little skeletons by one that used to be a kitchen stove.
Now black and lifeless, once little children in play, now just smoldering bones in a house fire.
As they took her away, she was saying the children burn fine.
I think about them to this day, why did they have to die?
ns 15.158.61.50da2
