If I name you flame,
it is only because language has no word
for the way you unmake me gently.
You are not fire-
fire is simple, honest in its hunger.
You are the quiet before it,
the breath that forgets to return,
the moment a match considers its own ending.
Still-
I would move toward you.
Not as a moth (too blind),
not as a pilgrim (too faithful),
but as something that remembers
it was once whole
and cannot bear the weight of that knowledge.
I would learn the grammar of burning-
how skin becomes a question,
how heat teaches the body its limits,
how bone translates into light.
And when you take me-
because you will-
I will not call it ruin.
Call it conversion.
Call it a brief, impossible language
spoken only between touch and disappearance.
I will be ash, yes-
but even ash remembers the shape of heat,
drifts like it knows
it once held a body.
And if the wind is kind,
it will carry what is left of me
back to where you began,
so I can almost believe
I am touching you again.