I lit the world on fire,
watched it go up in smoke,
smelled the scent of ashen rose,
passion decomposed,
and dared to question the purity of the oxygen,
but I swallowed my tongue,
secrets like cigarettes,
one puff and I’d choke.

This pyromaniac who stole a match,
he set my heart ablaze,
but he didn’t have water to put out the flames,
so I burned and burned,
he didn’t say a word.

I never liked to destroy,
rather create with my mind,
but I had a habit of falling for ne’er-do-wells,
putting myself through hell,
all for fulfilling an aching void where my heart once resided,
so I took his things that he left in the wake of the flame.

His favorite shirt,
photographs that harbored painful memories,
a thrifted teddy bear left in the dirt,
and all the poems I wrote―
doused in kerosene,
lit on fire,
and I watched it go up in smoke.

Meet the pyromaniac’s demise,
I am the water putting him out,
keeping the embers dancing about for myself,
leaving him to die in a scorching wasteland,
now he understands when I said that I was just as capable of destruction,
just because I didn’t hurt people the way he did,
I had my own ways of making my presence known,
in the aftermath of this warfare,
I walk out of it alone,
watching from the mountains as our world goes up in smoke.