Conflagration
It burns away eventually—
projects we spend our lifetimes building,
downtown edifices that once
stood vigilant for patrons,
their heavy doors flung open for the last time,
then closed again.
Inferno erupts through rooftops,
long past midnight, when
shopkeepers forget to pay attention.
Too late now.
Down the block, another structure
scorched beyond recognition.
Was it a house or a trailer?
Beams blackened, charred bone.
In front of the wreckage,
more wreckage.
An ancient station wagon,
windows and doors seared to cinders.
Even metal evaporates into flames.
Why is my town suddenly burning?
Does the blaze know something
no person understands?
Meanwhile, restless hands
keep trying to build and build.
Construction blooms like steel weeds
from the ruins, cranes dangling
in mute defiance.
Everybody thinks
their foundation is solid,
and nobody expects flames,
but sooner or later,
the fire will get it all anyway.
Lunch and the World’s Problems
Inside the Heartland Café
and General Store, REM’s
“Country Feedback”
plays on the jukebox.
Each note settles into my bones.
Old-fashioned cash register,
50-pound sacks of flour, postcards
of Malcolm X and Che Guevera.
Revolutionaries for sale.
Chicago, 1994.
The land of my birth,
but not my son’s. At four,
he asks too many questions:
“Does everyone die of AIDS?”
“Is Bill Gates evil, or a genius?”
“Is toxic waste killing our planet?”
I could answer yes to everything,
but I order a stir-fry instead.
Inside the jukebox,
one record replaces another,
lifting plastic discs
with mantid arms, and I
decide that none of it matters,
at least for now. My son,
hunched over his hot chocolate,
plates spread before us,
stacked piles of cornbread and butter.
Outside, the world
and its endless cache
of plastic army men,
turning this way and that,
with no resolution.
Leah Mueller’s work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions and was nominated for the 2024 edition. Her two newest books are The Failure of Photography (Garden Party Press, 2023) and Widow’s Fire (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).
web: www.leahmueller.org | instagram: msleahsnapdragon
