A Castle in Ruins

In the ruins of my castle,
I'm lighting a cigarette on the smoldering bedstead,
drowning my face in its incessant smoke.
The phone rings. It's Cathy.
Who'd have thought that a voice would be
the last thing standing.
"Are you okay?" she asks. She's heard.
Everybody's heard.
Was it the boiler in the cellar?
How about the fire-place? An electric short?
No one raises the possibility
that it could have been the hot sex
sparking and flaming.
Or some incendiary ideas
flashing out through my brain.

This conflagration is personal,
I long to tell them.
It's just something between me
and this cataclysmic inferno.
For once in my life, I blazed.
So what if the house had to pay.

John Grey is an Australian poet and U.S. resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink, and Tenth Muse. His latest books—Subject Matters, Between Two Fires, and Covert—are available on Amazon. His work is forthcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories, and Cantos.