You hold the short balsa match
Between your stubby pale fingers
The bitten-down nails painted black-cherry-hot-blood red.
And you tremble.

Strike it- sulfur's tangy odor permeates the air.

Your soul rattles like dead leaves
On the end of a long blight-stricken oak branch in November.

Skin, it hisses like firewood left out in the rain
And reddens like your cheeks did when your lips first touched his,
When you first saw his skin gleaming white
In the Autumn-chill  moonglow.

Now it blisters, white and swollen, tender, sore.
And you feel you've accomplished something, moved forward,
But there's a faint voice
Calling to you from the back of your consciousness
Telling you you've gone down the wrong road entirely.