The Fire Consumes, The Fire Produces

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The Fire Consumes, The Fire Produces Caroline Chavatel (bio) The Fire Consumes, The Fire Produces I dig my own grave daily.How I prevent my losses is up to me. I have lost many things at once, but do not make it plural. We exist in singularity. For instance, the drops that soak my jacket are all called rain. Or the scissors in a kitchen drawer, plural, denotate a singular pair. How to say two pairs? My therapist asks aboutmy traumas, as if I could identify eachpetal and not simply call it flower. We share our pasts with each other like overpriced dessert. This is to say: I will not turn from you despite your blooms. She says the past is a fire we are always putting out. The sky in Atlanta darkens firstand you name it dim lateron the West Coast. We have the same word for what shifts above but it performs otherwise across longitudes, [End Page 94] teasing us with the appearance of difference. And in Seattle, the rainclouds look like smoke. And the rainclouds look. [End Page 95] Caroline Chavatel Caroline Chavatel is the author of White Noises (Greentower Press, 2019), which won The Laurel Review's 2018 Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Foundry, Poetry Northwest, AGNI, and Gulf Coast, among others. She is an editor at Madhouse Press and cofounding editor of The Shore. She is currently a PhD student at Georgia State University where she teaches and is Poetry Editor of New South. Copyright © 2020 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents