the house
has burned too long;
flames peeling it raw,
timbers weeping black resin,
the roof yawning open
like a jaw unhinged,
swallowing the night whole.
he stands in the threshold,
haloed in ruin,
his hands blackened,
his mouth full of embers.
“see?” he murmurs,
“even the bones remember heat.”
she steps forward,
smoke seeping into her lungs,
her ribs groaning like the beams above.
“i have seen,” she whispers,
“and i have stayed.”
the walls moan,
spitting nails,
plaster sloughing like dead skin.
molten glass dribbles from the windows,
the house liquefying,
curling in on itself like a carcass
picked clean by heat.
he does not flinch.
fire licks at his ankles,
hungry, worshipful,
his shadow stretched long and thin,
wraith of something
once flesh.
and she—she is dissolving too,
veins coursing with molten longing,
her hands blistered from the reach of him.
nothing.
all char
but one ember;
his hunger.
:>
