wildscape. literary journal

Small Fires
by Ace Boggess

Stranger meets stranger in the morning.
One lives for moments between stories
in which a story told is told again.
The other, desperate for the slightest touch
after years of neglect, doesn’t last
long enough to boil a pot of instant oats.
Both consider this success,
desire not spelled out in hours,
more a connection passing like an unexpected shock,
what so many want: to feel & know we are felt,
priest & penitent sharing last rites,
foolhardy hero rushing into a burning house
to save himself in the flesh he carries out.

“What Do You Say to Strangers That Hold Your Fate?”
by Ace Boggess

                 question asked by Savannah Dudley

I never expected to experience happiness
in a box. Will you forgive me?

Shadows I wore like a jacket of knives
left scars I should be ashamed to show.

Now other shadows embrace me.
I welcome their touch bringing ecstasy.

I have been wrong so many times
that to count my mistakes

would take a lifetime of mistakes
to stand on, wasted sadnesses,

shards of glass. Will you forgive me?
Recovery is an assembly line where

not all machines perform their functions.
Look. I’ve crafted a new human being

with flaws. It has never known
the warm Spring air of choosing.

about the author // Ace Boggess