The fire came back, and I can feel it tensing in my bones, running ripples down my spine. I need to burn, to feel the edge of pain pressing against a threshold, to breathe into it and through it, to know that fear and burn through to acceptance. It’s potent, visceral; I can burn anywhere I can find a spark, and you taste like lightning.
I want to watch you burn as surely as your hands hold flame. Touch my skin; we will combust without explosion. I can hold the blaze along the contours of my skin. I understand the heat; it is as much a part of me as my blood. My skin knows this caress like an old ache, yearning.
Another part of me knows that for this, I would beg.
The fire came back and with it, liquid language erupting, volcanic and unsolidified, white-hot movement unbound. It never stopped, exactly; I have been writing you with my skin, the curl and unfurl of limbs stretching against the dawn, my body’s response to the feel of your caress in the moonlight. If I stopped telling you, it is perhaps that I take for granted that you know that you are etched across my face, memories of moments shared peeking up behind my eyes and spilling over into a smile.
But now, I close my eyes, drunk on the feeling of heat rippling across my skin, dancing inside of a slow, steady burn, controlling my breathing to temper the smoldering coals, your hand around my throat, the embers quiet.
Release.
And with the oxygen, a flame leaping forth, a phoenix erupting from ash, gasping for breath. I am beautiful when my eyes flicker red, when the gold separates into a concentrated core in the center and you find a wolf peering back at you. The edges of my skin are singed and my lips taste like smoke, and I am sitting back, watching you, considering your stillness, anticipating your movements. I push forward and pull back, waiting. I was made for this, to live dancing in between the smoldering coals and the roaring flames, to slide into the cracks and let the heat burn away what I cannot hold.
The fire came back, and it is here that I remember how to breathe deeply. An illuminated plummet into darkness. This is my anchor, the old burn, the steady embers glowing and pulsing inside my skin, the wet heat, the temperamental passion, the desert blooming.
The fire came back, tossing conflagrations of language into the wind, laughing in the shifting seasons, hair dancing, something wild and just slightly on the edge of reckless. Lightning, candlelight, the energetic pulse in the palm of my hands, the world spectrums from white to red as I drink in sunlight, guzzling the heat.
Sitting quietly, holding the eruption inside my skin, the shifting temperament of eyes and slow spread of smiles. The inhale exhale of a cigarette. The steady warmth of sunlight.
The fire came back.
Monomaniacism 