And if there was a fire, what would you do? Would it be the child staring up at you, that you save, or would it be your white, privileged palms and your white soft ice cream?

No, think about it. Don't answer.

An exhibition for all, families, happy, hopeful, anxious, desperate. Fire. Closed space, crowd, clamor, rush, lives, lives dying, you dying, death. Children, lives yet not lived, fire. Closed space, smoke, burns, pain, loss, red, red, death, flames, fear . . . fear, fear, fear, fear, what do you do?

There's fear crowding your mind, there's love clotting your heart, love . . . love for a life of all unloved. Do you run to the child now buried, screaming, crying, lodged under death, do you go pick up that waning, burning death with your fingertips, and do you haul it up, for a life to escape, or do you fear the yet another piece of canvas, shricking murder, murder, murder, alit with fire, alit with your death, your end.

I ask you, because I don't know what I would do; I am scared, and I love, and I don't know what I would do, and I'm scared because I have to think to answer what I would do. I am scared, because I have no answer, and one day I'll be at an exhibition, of families, of fervid fire, and of melting desires, I'll have to choose. I'll have an answer . . . I don't want, and I'm scared, because I don't know what I would do, then , and after, and after, and after. And I wonder if I'll go to mom weeping, or to dad smiling.

(a.n) excerpt from a work long ago written.