Let me be the first to warn you:

I am wildfire and catastrophic destruction,
I am consuming fever and searing passion,
I am possessed by infectious radiation, a contagion
for all things surreptitious and sacred.

I will vacuum the oxygen from your gasping lungs,
blister your lips,
and plunge you deep into my inferno.

I will gallop as chopping thunder across your oceans,
etch lightning streaks zigzagging behind your eyelids,
and illuminate veiled dimensions of your incandescent spectrum.

You will know me,
in flares sparking your night sky
into snapshots of opalescence and shadow.
You will know me,
in relentless flames licking your woodlands
skeletal and hollow and barren.
You will know me,
in remnants of cinders, ashen palms,
and smoky ribbons evaporating through your skin.

I am celestial pyromaniac:
daughter
of Hephaestus and Artemis,
incubated
in the womb of a supernova,
birthed
in the creation of Andromeda,
purified
by internal cycles of eruption,
hurled
through the cosmos by shooting stars,
magnetized
to earth by gravity and destiny, carried to you by entropy and choice.

I am volcanic and heaving
beneath the crust of the planet.
I am ultraviolet hallucination, I am firework destruction, I am spontaneous combustion, I am electric incineration, I am smoldering embrace, I am all things cataclysm and rebirth, interlaced.
And when I pierce molten and ecstatic and untamed
through your reality, you will know
what it means to drown dancing in flames.

the leaves of the forest are erupting into flames,
flaring orange and honeysuckle red,
swaying, stretching their fingers, dooming their neighbors to burn.
embers catapult skyward and tumble to the ground,
the fire devours itself, withering to reveal hearty skeletons beneath.
the sun is perched atop a golden throne
ever slip-sliding down the earth's dome
to embrace the horizon.
his smoldering gaze fans the kaleidoscopic furnace,
igniting ****** pockets of wilderness,
hovering for only a hushed breath
before bending to kiss another expanse with incandescent pigment.
the wind fondles scorched leaves as they sigh
and curl into their chests.
after sailing the departed to their ashen graveyard the breeze disappears, whistling through a maze of branches.
it carries the scent of the inferno on it's charred palms to the city beyond,
running residue swiftly under the noses of sidewalk dwellers
who absentmindedly look up from their shoes
to see if signs of smoke hover in the darkening sky.

the fathers of the forest turn a new chapter,
all silent like ripples of breath upon a lake.
under the gaze of a waning solar mistress
they rotate their pigments and shed their costumes,
revealing decades of patient listening.
the stars tango in unison to the left,
holding hands and spinning so quick they appear
motionless
to the eye of the beholder.
I stand in awe of the illusion of stability
as I hurtle through the milkyway on a melting rock.
the sheer impossibility of unveiling meaning
at the ephemeral core of this reality
stings at my stomach like one thousand hornets drunk on whiskey.
and as my laugh echoes orchestral through the meadow,
I discover the secret of everything.

chained up on a visceral boomerang to your apathy -
disembody, then shrivel back into my chest.
infested with a vile peanut gallery
snickering in the belly of my ears.
cursed with an over-active mental ***** reflex,
born with the habit of re-ingesting bile and lies.
gag-order on the heart so it doesn't whip me
with it's crown of thorns
twisted from plucking the horns of dead roses.
he loves me, he has no room for me,
beyond the tip-tap of trembling bones upon his shoulder.
i've trimmed myself down with neglect,
i've perfected the presentation of deception
as a romantic encounter,
monotonous plunging of doubt across layers of skin.
carouseling a patch-worked mantra of ambivalence,
motion sickness riding on my collarbone dressed with a grin
heaving and green.
i caught whiplash from sneaking glances at you
while creating the illusion
that i was forever turning away -
always leaving, always shaking out a no,
always building up a wax paper wall
(always clumsy, always patching holes with cotton).
i'm wasting away on the offerings you drop at the pit of my stomach:
all lead anvils and hurricanes.
i wish i could carve out the part of me that thinks of you,
drown it in cyanide, and mock it's funeral with fireworks.
i am toddler-tantrum-flinging my limbs wild at the sky,
eyes pinched shut, and teeth blooding my lips.
loving you tastes of salt and iron,
what a balanced palette for dining on a soul.

I found god
while cleaning out my childhood bedroom,
he was buried all dusty
in the left corner of
my mothball closet
underneath the boxed remains
of other men who have left me
guilty and
hungry.