Suddenly I am a wildfire.

My warning rolled off my lips,
as you threw matches at my feet,
retreating from the angry burn.
A smile on your face, you knew
the game I was unwilling to play.

I was your martyr, and you,
the sword through my throat.
Baptizing me in my own blood,
painting me every hue, yet still
I was not the right shade for you.

This is more than flint and friction,
this is arson by your hand. It was
your breath that gave life to the
immaculate inferno that I am.

Suddenly I am a wildfire

and I am out of your control.
I am more than your narcissism,
a maelstrom of malice to the blistered
fingertips that had scared
this sacred skin.

Hear the sirens sing my name
while no one whispers yours.
The damage is done and out
of your hands, nothing more
that you can say.

I am the fire that will never
truly die, see my essence in
the embers and how even when the
heat subsides, cleansed charred
grounds give new life and you
will realize that while you were
merely the fuel, I was the force.

It has been 10 years since I’ve first seen your face
and, around your ankles, the weight of  generations
of blood that bit their tongues behind silent lips.
It has been 10 years since I accepted that I was
never going to be just as ‘happy’ as other girls,
I was an observer behind the windows when all
I really wanted was to go out and play.
I hated you—no, I loathed you--but that could not
be true because you didn’t let me come close
to feeling so human. You stole birthday parties from me,
you stole my mornings as I laid in bed, unable to
move, crushed down by the burden of you.

It has been 8 years since I detached myself from
this body, when I decided nothing could destroy me
quite like you. I threw myself from tall buildings,
hoping that someone would care enough to catch me.
The ground hurt worse and worse each time.
You taught me that being suicidal does not have to be
an active effort. That its undertones lie in the
carelessness of crossing the street without looking,
That it is in the silence of distancing myself from
every friend I had because ‘it just makes it easier’ if I was alone.

It has been 4 years since I allowed myself to admit
that I simply could not carry your body alone.
I refused to be ashamed of you because you
were never my choice. I can still remember the
way my mother’s eyes rimmed with tears as she
realized just how long you have been residing in this
household.  Since that day, you began fade. You disappeared
the way the monsters under the bed retreat from
the flashlight. Your presence was much more overbearing
breathing down my neck than when I looked you in the face.
But even now, sometimes I find your fingerprints pressed
against my window, and your glazed eyes gazing back
at me in the mirror.

Indulged me in its golden glow,
traced its light across my face,
trailing freckles in its wake.
It hung in the sky for the
world to see, prideful in its praise,
entranced in its illumination,
I strayed, held at a safe distance.
Long hours embraced in your heat,
your company inevitably consuming me.

Hypnotized, I came too close.
The warmth that wrapped
around my skin pulled me in
and now I burn to the touch.
Fever catching like flames,
suddenly I am a wildfire.

The days collect and seasons run.
Your light diminishes to dusk.
Winter creeps into my bones,
gray-scale shaded the home
I once found comfort in. Your love
lingers for shorter hours now,
chasing its shadow on the ground,
I grasp with fingertips as we drift
further and further away.
It leaves me longing for summer days.

let the edges blur,
easier to see
muted silhouettes
with your amber hair.

your words, once easy
to swallow when you
stained my lips crimson,
leave a bitter taste.

like the aching in
my outstretched arms,
clung to expectation,
fallen in defeat.

you, in your grays and blues,
with eager expectations clawing
my skin from its bone.
you tore me apart just to see
the colors that I would spill.
paint them in every hue
and they still wouldn’t be
the right shade for you.

do you expect me to smile back
after you’ve pulled every molar
from its bed? to lend you my
splintered spine for your knife?

the miles soaked in blood
are now stained for you.
but you would still claim
there is more to give.

I hope it hurts
that it’s my hand
that claws your throat
whenever you kiss her.

drag yourself
across the shards
the fragments that reflect
the hollowness we are.

let it hang
a fractured breath in the air
that is not quite there
something vague.

I am known for crying wolf
and for holding empty space.
but the cry was very much real;
the wolves have learned my face.