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.

i've always been a stream
ever flowing
ever changing
carving my way through the earth's tender skin
whispering ancient secrets to the stones newly birthed from the mountain's embrace,
their edges sharp with youth.
i mourn the fleeting death of grass
knowing it will return,
yet feeling each loss as if it were the last.
i greet the birds that dip their wings in my waters,
the trees that shade my journey,
the life that springs and fades along my edges,
each moment, a momentary reflection
in my endless course.
i move on,
carrying memories that dissolve in my depths
until all that remains is the motion,
the ceaseless forgetting.

i've always admired the ocean,
vast and ancient,
cradling life beneath its dark, unknowable surface.
it bears witness to the birth and death
of a million dreams
yet holds onto the bones of forgotten worlds
that rest in its silent, sunken graves.
unchanging, it reflects the sky's face
absorbing the storms
but never surrendering its secrets.
the ocean is stillness,
a deep, solitary wisdom
i've always longed to be.

oh, to be the ocean,
to hold the weight of history in my depths,
to be vast, to be constant,
to be silent,
but never alone.