The New Beginnings Party

The hosts bought flash paper,
that curious mix of cellulose
and nitric acid. On it, we wrote
our to-leave-behinds in pencil.
Some erased, some traced cryptics.
Then ignite! and fire flared and fell
ashless into a terrine decorated
with leaping fish. We wished
to finish what last year
wrought, look forward.
Two people chuckled.
Another drank to his burst.

The widow’s scrap escaped,
one more tissue of her blank grief
chose flight over flame. A furnace
whoosh, an opened door and a scoot
to the will of arctic blizzard winds.
Heaven-bent, fate-sent we knew
whose it was, why her grief
fled rituals of pyrotechnics
and chose the freezing open air.