i had always thought that love would feel like fire.
not in its rage or destruction,
but the heat, the light that flickers across her face
when it's all that i can see.

i would watch her smile as it slipped through the cracks.
she laughs like sunlight, even now
but i am hopeless and hollow and beyond all divinity,
i wished i was good enough to give her to someone better.

she looks at me like candlelight through glass
as if the fluorescents could never wash me out,
as if we lived somewhere that never existed,
like she would love me if i let her.

but there is no her.
she is the construction of a poet in despair.
she lives in my chest, hollowed out and filled with kerosene
and her fingers graze the matchstick in my hand

i think of her hair under moonlight
i think of her eyes closed in a midday heat that only dreams have
i think of rain, a rain that pours for weeks without relief
the match is lit and i swallow it whole.