Paulette Giles' "Paper Matches"

About two weeks ago, I read Paulette Giles' "Paper Matches" in The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition (which I'm still reading as part of my Anthology Odyssey project).  I don't know if I'd read it before, but it seemed sort of familiar.  Anyway, I noticed something about the metaphor Giles uses.

The narrator makes a distinction between the aunts washing dishes inside and the uncles who are goofing around outside.  Then she says that "Written on me was a message, / 'At Your Service' like a book of / paper matches" (lines 9-11).  Later lines are sort of ambiguous in that they could have a meaning within that metaphor or apart from it.

Immediately after that metaphor about matches is introduced, the narrator says, "One by one we were / taken out and struck." (lines 11-12).  Within the matches metaphor, it means that the women are used up individually, just as singular matches are "taken out" of a pack of matches and "struck" for their illumination.  However, since the inside/outside distinction between the women and men has already been established, there can also be a literal interpretation of those lines - that the women are "taken out" from the kitchen where they're washing dishes to the yard and "struck" in the sense of physically assaulted.

Next, there's "We come bearing supper. / our heads on fire." (lines 13-14).  Within the metaphor of matches, the women are again being used.  Like matches, they've been "struck," and now they're providing a service ("bearing supper") in the same way that matches bear light.  The "heads of fire" indicates that service within the match metaphor, but it also recalls "the rages that small animals have" from line 7.  "our heads on fire" indicates the anger and fury that the women have because of how they're being used.