My tongue is charred
on the planes of your chest;
fingers seared from tracing the
patterns in your skin.
Forest-fires spark between us.
The hairs on my arms are long burnt away.

You exhale.
Your breath is smoke and I gladly breathe it in.
My lungs survive.
Later the doctors will be amazed that I
lived as long as I did.

We leave no ashes.
The flames are too high.

And yet–

Nothing matches the fires inside,
where new suns are born
every time you speak.
Words drip like diamonds from your lips,
but I love the frogs and maggots too.

My plates are shifting.
The internal landscape speaks for itself:
I listen
to seismograph readouts,
details of soil composition and
tidal patterns,
and hear your breath
in every charted line.