I like the feeling of flames between my fingers,
that inkling of you’re about to hurt before my nerves get wise.
I think it’s like the moment you look into her eyes,
that second when you feel like your future is going to crumble
because she has all of you tangled up between eyelashes.
It won’t matter if you’re tugging at the knot in your striped tie,
tying shoe laces evenly because you want to make her proud with your paycheck,
or if you’re lying on your back in a subway car,
remembering math lessons between flickering fluorescent lights.
You’ve ended up alone because of love, but love can never leave you alone.
A lighter is like love, I think. Two forces collide, reach impasse
between their differences, and create something uncontrollable that
destroys them, burns them both before they realize what they’ve touched.
And a lighter can burn your fingers anywhere--in a bakery in St. Louis
or in your bedroom at the foot of a kerosene mile
where you’ve given up on the impasse, on the spark and singe of the first glimpse.
But the flame leaves as swiftly as it comes.
Between the spark of her eyes and the sting of a ring hitting the floor,
there is a gasp of breath, a click when the steel meets flame and douses the light;
but there’s more to it, I think--how the heat lingers, or how you can still feel
the soft bite of the steel against your thumb.
It’ll pass, unlike the burns on your ring finger,
or the way you’ll always remember what the fire looked like.
So yes, you've been left by the fire, but the fire will never leave you alone.
Gender:
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