only heat.
I thought I might be swallowed by the heat,
like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,”
and nothing would be left of me.
Someone brought Doc Rice.
He tended Ma first,
then came to me.
The doctor cut away the skin on my hands, it hung in
crested strips.
He cut my skin away with scissors,
then poked my hands with pins to see what I could
feel.
He bathed my burns in antiseptic.
Only then the pain came.
July 1934