The Matchbox House

Photo by Jeffrey Czum from Pexels

The Matchbox House 

By Swadha Rawat

 

Struck a match

Or in this case, well more than a few:

A bubbling vat of oil, a hunk of smouldering charcoal and

Another shovelful of hard, dark coal fuel.

Covered your ears, breathed in the smoke:

Wispy strands and dissipating tendrils caressing your hair.

 

Set a clock, and forgot, that it was ever there.

A decade, two, three and four

Then struck it with a baseball bat when the buzzing alarm wouldn’t stop.

Eyes still closed,

In a slowly warming up room: stifling, festering, irrevocably altering.

The ice starts dripping down, pooling round the refrigerator

But the taps run dry, coated with a fine layer of corrosive acid.

(Entire biomes lost, entire species gone, entire livelihoods lost to the seemingly inevitable crawl of time.)

 

It was not inevitable, it could be stopped

But still the man in the room lies, half asleep, deaf to his own wheezes,

Resting upon a bed built from the pillaging of his mother, of the Earth.

Easy lies the head that wears a half delusional, solid greed crown.

 

A knock sounds on the door

Then another and another and one more.

He closes the hole in the roof, drudges up some of the waste in the pipes so water drips

Drop by valuable drop from the taps again.

He is not yet done but the knocking grows weaker and so he stops,

Stretches his arms above his head, knocks down some hanging plants,

Getting ready to close his eyes again.

His guise melting away slightly slower in the now, rapidly heating room.

 

I stand outside his door,

And know,

That you do too.

 

We all must stand outside his door and keep on knocking until it breaks down.

Turn down the thermostat whose needle was inching up degree by degree

And let the refrigerator cool,

Mop up the pooling water and clean up the taps.

Repot and regrow the plants, dust up the dingy room.

 

Put out the match

Or well in this case, extinguish its unrelenting thirst:

No more bubbling vat of oil, no hunk of smouldering charcoal and

Not another shovelful of hard, dark coal fuel.

Open your ears, and open your eyes and open your mouth,

(Realize: You’re in a house that’s about to go up in flames and that house is your own.)

To breathe in air,

That you can finally breathe.