Eyes in the Firelight

All of it together ashes and flame,
burning, feeding, warming
my face.
Heating
my skin.
Eyes in the firelight.
I’m here. I’m trying,
really but in the same sense
I’m so very far away
because I know better than
to get too close to a flame.
I suppose that’s what happens
sometimes,
when you’ve been burned before.
It’s hard to focus on the beauty
when all you remember is the pain.

I listen and everything inside me burns.
I’m listening.
Watching the fire too.
Desires, wants, cravings,
poked and prodded.
Stabbed via metal pole.
Wood topples. Sparks fly.
It would be nice to tell every secret and
every single soul ache.
As if when spoken each and every would be
cast into the flames
and the constant sear of wondering; how will this ever work out? Finally ceases.
Eyes in the firelight.

I try to say it because you’ve already said so much to me.
Though the wind blows
opposite of us,
I’m choking on smoke.
In the night my stare says everything that goes unspoken.
Not tonight, perhaps not ever but,
In the pauses and the sighs and the glances,
I speak my tangled truth.
Whether or not this simple night matters, I’d like to think
you can hear everything I won’t say.
I sort of venture into what smolders below and
I thank you, I do
for listening and
inquiring politely, about what hurts.
As I did with you,
but I cannot say
what haunts me tonight.
If I dare open a vent and let the heat disperse
from my singed soul
I may combust and that chaos is not yours to control.
Eyes in the firelight.