Black Iron Lung 

It squats in the corner like an anchor—
black-ribbed, unyielding,
a heavy geometry of iron.
To me it is a black iron lung.

It draws in the world’s bituminous panic,
filters the grit,
and exhales anthracite warmth.
Soot thick in my throat—
I stomach it at last.

I pull on thick leather gloves,
a hide barrier against the heat’s liability,
and reach for the brass coil.
The wire gives with a springy heartbeat
before the true weight of the iron takes over.

I yank the lever—
a gritty, metal-on-metal groan—
turning the act of opening the furnace
into ritual containment.
A harbor
where other people’s chaos is mastered.

Sentience is the anthracite I shovel in—
heavy, inherited malediction.
It warms the room
but leaves my hands stained black.

Now the iron wakes with a tock-tock,
expanding, contracting,
bleeding the sulfuric choke of swallowed pride
slow through the ash-caked mica.
Inside, a phantom flicker —
the illusion of fire burning in shadow.

The heat lingers long after the coal dies to a whisper,
a dull bruised red that refuses to let the room go cold.
I feel the throb of resentment through the iron—
the furnace-born slump of steel.

I have learned how to hold the ash
until the sun finds the garden.