Girl on Fire

I post this every year during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire commemoration. I wrote it in 2012.

Girl on Fire

Frannie Zellman

In remembrance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, in Manhattan, Lower East Side -March 25,
1911

The last thing I thought before I jumped

was not that the doors were locked

or that I would die

if I missed the net

and my body splattered

but of the new theater

they were building on Second Avenue

and that spring was coming.

King Lear lost his daughters.

The factory owners lost us.

They pretended in court

that the doors were locked

to prevent theft.

My fiancé put three rocks

on my gravestone

and sobbed.

Fire fought fire –

We were on fire, they said,

in 1909,

when we walked out

and even thugs sent by the bosses

could not quench the fight in us

as our eyes mocked them.

Two years later

after smoke curled

and flames crackled through the doors

and singed our clothes

and hands and faces

and some of us jumped,

100,000 people marched.

One hundred years later

little ones

around the world

chained to their work

as smoke rises

cannot jump.

Their owners do not bother

to lock the doors.

Yet somehow somewhere

a girl takes flight

laughs

at those who own the world ,

soars above them

and with eyes on fire

dares the owned souls of the world