The Timeline by What Burns

a Burning Haibun after Torrin A. Greathouse and Diego Báez

First Degree

You can take the timeline, mark it by what burns: marshmallows moonshine ground flowers, the skin of my fingertip, stung by the waterproof candle—I thought the pool would cool it. Anywhere you mark, a candle burns or somebody builds a fire: a menorah a minister, my mother’s mother—our neighbor’s sweaty hand doesn’t burn as he rubs an onion half along the grill’s grate and shelf, lets it lap up char, thirsty as the flame, the fire, the burn—cachaça, a surprise fire of jalapeños on my mother’s tongue, chicken heart, the skin of my tender feet racing my best friend across angry tennis pavement; the skin of my forearm, returning under the sun of a land I abandoned unknowing, unworded—not in the sense of my grandma’s sketchbooks, every page rendered illegible around their edges, just tinged at their core; more like her wood stove before she lit it—my young tongue lacked the language of burning. A lack of language burns: I haven’t learned how to ask my father about dreams, whether it, too, is a kind of burn, a smoke: the slow cropping in his mind, though I know it’s a candle vanishing; I thank nothing in particular that my mom, mostly, kept it: hers, that the hands stacking logs that last day in her cabin—as above the world, uncountable candles flickered—were mainly the same hands dusting my grandma onto a riverbank, passing sparklers to the neighbor kids. The neighbor kids—

                                                                                                            —hers

Second Degree
You can take the timeline, mark it bywhat burns: marshmallows moonshine ground flowers, the skin of my fingertip, stung by the waterproof candle —I thought the pool would cool it. Anywhere you mark, a candle burns or somebody builds a fire: a menorah a minister, my mother’s mother—our neighbor’s sweaty hand doesn’t burn as he rubs an on ion half along the grill’s grate and shelf, lets it lap up char, thirsty as the flame, the fire, the burn—cachaça, a surprise fire of jalapeños on my mother’s tongue, chicken heart, the skin of my tender feet racing my best friend across angry tennis pavement; the skin of my forearm, returning under the sun of a land I abandoned unknowing, unworded—not in the sense of my grandma’s sketchbooks, every page rendered illegible around their edges, just tinged at their core; more like her wood stove before she lit it—my young tongue lacked the language of burning. A lack of language burns: I haven’t learned how to ask my father about dreams, whether it, too, is a kind of burn, a smoke: the slow cropping in his mind, though I know it’s a candle vanishing; I thank nothing in particular that my mom, mostly, kept it: hers, that the hands stacking logs that last day in her cabin—as above the world, uncountable candles flickered—were mainly the same hands dusting my grandma onto a riverbank, passing sparklers to the neighbor kids. The neighbor kids—

                                                                                                            —hers

Third Degree
You can take the timeline, mark it by what burns : moonshine, the skin of a minister, my
mother ‘s mother— our on my mother’s chicken heart, the skin of skin of lit it—my
young tongue lacked the language of  the world table —

                                                                                                            —hers