Spontaneous Human Combustion by Brian Baker

All that is now left of you

is most of your legs, the

bottom half of your trousers

and all of your shoes, socks, feet.

The rest, though, was fire,

you burned right through

the wood and linoleum,

melting the wires beneath,

stopping everything

(the electric clock curled

like a Dali pocket-watch, curled

right up like the western wicked witch,

bent nearly around the hour

of your bright fire flash)

Some say this was

less than spontaneous, believe

you must have at least touched flame,

that flesh then became a candlewick,

slow-burned from the outside in,

caught in the kiln

of oxygen and ignition.

(or was it just friction,

the sulfurous head of your soul

pulling across the tip of this

coarse world,

like a match?)

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Brian Baker (he/him) lives in London, Ontario, Canada He was the winner of Poetry London's Open Theme contest and has work forthcoming in the June edition of Cathexis Northwest Press. Twitter: @runstopwrite