Ashen Bride: Cursed Lovers

Fire breathed flames of life from where your name burned into a pile of forgotten ash,

decrepit and lifeless as though this too would eventually pass

Every morning and every night I write and rewrite the words I cannot speak, not in this life or the next, a collection of each letter burning a hole into the somber night as though it's some sort of illustrious flex.

He who could not be blamed had, in fact, been maimed--

For it was your name escaping from the lips of swimming sirens

warming the air with the shape of your presence, leaning in for the flames to whisper as the world bends and warps and wraps around the flames flickering in a pile of mourning urns

Your body remembering every lick, every burn

as the fire lives and breaths and dreams for you, the mind turns.

Our words sickle and fickle, resting on all the begotten souls

who aren't in heaven--

for when the sun roars across the empty sky and sets the world alight--

embers blaze with each ill-retrieved-lie

while we rest and rest and catch our breath

to blow out a candle amidst rotting pools of bones cooling in a dying fire

we have yet to set

The bow of an arrow we cannot quite remember

sparks of defiance we gather until the last fire is ended

to mix with our wounds from salted stone

until the fire kisses me back

and we are home