Burning Universe
Ron Burch

Everything around us is burning. The streets are burning, the buildings are burning, the beautiful black sky above us is burning brightly. Even the fires are on fire.

Men and women stand on wavy sidewalks, talking in unaware voices, wearing flashy flamehats on their prickled heads.

Newborn babies emerge crackling and slightly singed. Old people turn to ash as they straggle down the street, and the wind blows them to pieces.

I once caught but couldn’t stop my hands from impulsively putting myself out. I can only look on silently, envying the women in camisoles and white dresses who drink steaming tea, coughing out hearty cinder laughs. I obscenely gaze at the businessmen in bowlers and black raincoats, driving their smoldering wrecks, chatting innocently with their coworkers who combust spontaneously.

Their words drift like smoke to the top of the earth, but I can’t grab onto them with my thin-boned fingers. They hang up there heavily, smoldering, obscuring the sun. Soon it will be darker.

Some of us long to burn.

Ron Burch’s short stories have been published in Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboz, PRISM International, The Café Irreal, Lamination Colony, and others. He lives in Los Angeles. He is married to the poet Catherine Daly. Learn more about Ron at his blog.