Peering through the smoke, you know: tomorrow, when the last of the embers smolder black, you will rise to full height and pass over the charred threshold and out to the lawn and proceed to the supermarket where the automatic doors must part gaping wide at your presence.

Because you will be barefoot, the tile will feel so cool against your soles. Because you will have your next moves on your mind, you will not stop at the milk, not touch a pack of gum, not lift any bottle of nearly-yellow orange juice out from behind the glass case. You will not notice any customers, or how they flinch to not see you—you, a woman covered in soot; you, stinking of char; they, who for all these years you could greet only with mumbling, with a lump in your throat. Nor will you recall the many times you have come home from this same supermarket carrying in his bananas and coffee and bread as he has told you only that this was not nearly enough, and anyway you bought the wrong things.

You will have no time for these distractions. You will be a woman on a mission. You will walk arrow-straight.

Straight to the checkout counter and the boy sitting behind it. Straight to lay down an ash-filthy quarter. And you will point just as straight, beyond the boy’s shoulder and above, casting a finger directly at the shelf stocked to near-bursting with dozens of boxes of matches, 250 in a pack. Then, with your finger in the air and your mouth open wide, you will pronounce the one word he has kept from your lips all these many years.

More, you will declare.

So loud the words seem to burst into flame.

More. Because you know your work has only begun.