It wasn’t wind. It differently burned. 
My child’s child, a reptile in pumice. A white 
that wasn’t a cloud. Santorini, a blown 
gasket, disappearing into a future without us. 
I had no skin. So many nights, I held my wrist 
over coal to cauterize the open veins. To 

not die, you see, was a powerful choice. To 
every morning, this was all to life there was. Burned 
and hostile, I wasn’t ready to unhook from your wrist. 
A wave and then another. Islands flanked with white. 
I among the seventy-plus lost to the caldera. Among us 
I lived least on a trajectory. A lit wet stick blown