Phoenix

Ash was still warm when the phoenix stood. Flame took the ruined feather and made it gold. The bird opened, and the nest that had been nothing became a throat of fire. People who watched did not clap. They carried the heat away as a phoenix gift, and it found them later, phoenix playing cards warming a cold table, a phoenix notebook whose first line arrived already burning, a phoenix postcard that smelled of smoke when the seal broke. The nest went grey again. The bird did not.