Salamander

I get a fire going until the flick-roots are blue, the smoke thick enough to climb, then I step between logs glimmering like sticks in a stomach. The lizards see me and run and die in the cold, so maybe, I think, I must accustom the next brood to my scent.

 

Finding eggs is easy. I note a clump of logs glowing with a thousand eyes and there I find them, small, angry. I raise one to see if the fetus is kicking in the ash, but I take the egg too close to the air element, or maybe wind blows out of jealousy, and the egg turns to coal in my boiled fingers.

 

The fire is kind enough to lift my tears.

 

The next egg I push down my throat, placing it by the heat of my liver, wrapped in blood-web, and now I’m running out the fire, running for the lake to wash the blackened scale of my skin, to feel the living stone inside my belly, to finish what the mystics never started.