For the past five days,
all of my dreams have tasted like whiskey
and every morning
sounds like champagne glasses.
I suppose this makes me haunted.
Perhaps the devil is a woman.

The night we met
was surrounded by the circumstance
of a mysterious blaze.
In the town centre,
we never counted the bodies
or the screams heard.
I never found
who held the lighter
or told anyone else.

She
told me awful fairytales
of her last lover,
and the last man
to double cross
such a tempting tempest.

Where we met
was in the porch of her mansion
in the middle of sunny California.
In my head,
she wore a silk red nightgown
and smiled a ring off my finger.

We made love that night
until I forgot who I was
and became
the ruler of all things unequal.

I didn't see her again.
When the flames were too tall for me to eclipse,
the whole world was first to know.
I heard New Orleans
erupted into inferno last week.
I wonder if she
is enjoying herself there
and who
she is telling about me now.