Your toes are cold in just slippers
as you stand outside and watch

the ardent orange tongues,
lap up your tangibility.

They squirm through crevices in your floorboards
and kiss your clothes to ash.

They kneed and scream and crack.
You know you lost.

Before you can stop it,
The North Wind cups the fleeting embers in his palm
and tosses them into the molasses sky.

He whips them around tall buildings
and lets them settle on street signs.

He nestles ash in old, abandoned, pizza boxes
and in the fur behind the ear of a stranger's cat.

And you still standing there, shivering.
with bleach in your diet coke
and rocks in your pockets.
and I'm scared.

I wish I were there,
to wash that shirt
you've had on for days,

To braid your hair
and fix your make-up.
To make sure your still real.

To make sure you don't burst into dust,
and join the fragments of your
favorite Bob Marley poster
between the cracks of worn-out cobble stones.