Strike

Cindy Hunter Morgan is the author of Far Company (Wayne State University Press) and Harborless, which was a 2018 Michigan Notable Book and the winner of the 2017 Moveen Prize in Poetry. She also is the author of two chapbooks. She teaches creative writing at Michigan State University. Before being published by Short Édition, "Strike" was accepted as part of Michigan State University Libraries call for submissions on the theme of "Home," in coordination with the MSU Board of Art Museum's exhibit, "Where We Dwell."

My nephew flies a drone over my grandparents' empty house, over the orchard and empty barn, and past glazed windows—sun igniting the stained wallpaper of empty rooms. Every day the temperature slips— minus five, minus ten, and still the fire department plots to burn the house. We wait for the match to strike— a flame as slender as a finger. They'll bring in hay bales and wood pallets to kindle what is empty. It hardly makes sense, the scale of what will come. My grandpa lit one match each autumn, put a log on the fire every night before bed, stoked the fire every morning with apple wood until

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