Free Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox

to bring us? The heat had melted my frozen pee, and I remember thinking that I had nowhere to change. As if it mattered. I ripped off my jacket because the fire was heating the zipper like a branding iron. I burned my chin more than once.
    Papa screaming my matka ’s name
The fire truck screaming my house’s name
Me screaming my papa ’s name
The neighbour screaming the name of God
The firefighter’s radio screaming that the water was shut off
God screaming the name of the beast
    The Smok Wawelski screaming the name of its next, and possibly last, meal
    Brother Father screaming my name
    The meal screaming not to be eaten, The fire is too hot, too hot, why won’t anyone save me, my nightgown is burning, now my skin now my hair, so hot, God I have always believed in you, let me hold my son one last time, do not let him see me like this, kurvakurvakurva, is there a sin I don’t know about, tell him—
    I couldn’t hear the rest, no matter how close I got to the bedroom window.
    I was deaf to the most important words ever spoken to me.
    “Tell him.”
    Brother Father and Papa came running out of the house and hugged me, telling me not to listen, blocking my ears. Telling me not to worry, that it was just a hysterical neighbour. I still hadn’t moved. The world had changed, and I hadn’t moved a centimetre. Since when were things allowed to change without you? How was that fair?
    Later, a detektyw policji asked me the strangest questions, and I tried my best to answer them.
    “Do you remember how the fire started?”
    She wouldn’t understand a thing about the Smok Wawelski, so there was no point in telling her the truth.
    “In the Christmas tree.”
    “Then you ran outside.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why were you dressed in your winter clothes?”
    “Because it was cold outside.”
    “So you had time to get dressed, but not to warn your parents?”
    I fiddled with one of the buttons on my pajamas. She didn’t know how it was. She couldn’t know. She held a tissue to my nose, told me to blow, and pressed on with her inquiry.
    “Radek, why didn’t you answer your father when he called your name?”
    “Because I didn’t want him to think I was talking from inside the house,” I said.
    “Why would he think that? You were behind him.”
    “I don’t know. Papa doesn’t like it when I pee my pants. I was waiting for them to dry.”
    “Your papa was naked.”
    She should’ve known, dear Dorota, that the “why” questions have no real answers, that we can only give fake ones to placate, and that some of us are better at lying than others. She should’ve known that I was dazed and terrified, and that my little body was battling shock and hypothermia. The bitch should’ve given me a blanket.
    “Did your parents ever fight? It’s okay to talk about it. Your papa said it was okay to talk about anything with me.”
    They didn’t care about my papa . As I got older, I began to piece things together: why the firefighters had come late, why the water was “turned off” on our block. It must’ve been because my papa refused to be a stool pigeon for the Communist Party, and they probably knew about Brother Father, too.
    “Do you remember anything else about the fire?”
    What a fucking question.
    I refused to give any more answers that she could twist maliciously and write on her clipboard.
    Dorota, I hope you never have a housefire, if you haven’t already. Because decades later, you will not remember how long you stood in the cold, or how many fire trucks there were, or when you realized your mother had become a charred skeleton, or the last words she ever cried to you through a throat that was blistering and peeling away. You will not recall the changing colour of the flames, but you will make them up. You will reinvent everything.
    The smell of smoke, on the other hand, will never leave you.
    You’ll be lying in bed about to go to sleep, and charcoal will suddenly fill your nose. You’ll sprint through the