you apologise,
'I am bad with words'
but words are all
you are

you build me
home
out of parchment promises;
tangling tiny houses in
a line with your heartstrings;
whispers of 'forever' trailing
from chimney-topped letters,
the smoke fading between
the lines of notebook poetry
skies

I don't belong in your
pretty paper towns

I have never needed
a lighter in my pocket
to set myself alight;
flame is in my veins,
burning slowly through my
bloodstream until open wounds
drip liquid fire and
smoke is all I exhale

your heart might as well
be pumping kerosene -
flammable like
meteorites burning black
holes where clouds and
dreams hang white
against a night of ink
and my scribbled thoughts
scratched out a million times
over, and then once more
until only apologies twinkle in
the sky

you spit your own
wildfires, I forget
you burn villages on your own;
forests of words and thorns
and tangles, blank leaves of
paper fluttering slowly off branches
of kindling wood,
igniting as soon
as the winds against us
are too strong to fight;
off-white flowers
and syllable petals singeing
black;

we are only ashes
*at our feet