Imagination

I long to bask in the afterglow

of fingers tracing heat signatures

down my spine

wild, raw, aflame;

burning in the version of me

you conjure in sighs,

mantras that speak in tongues,

hips that answer back with prophecy.

My hands trace shadows,

pretending, shape-shifting,

not from memory, but from the quiet spell of fever.

Hope, where I lay on an altar,

worshiped like a storm

at midnight,

the sky confessing

what my heart will not allow

to escape my side-bitten lip.

I smolder in the haze

left by lightning's ghost,

a small ember crackling,

scorched breathless by my own myths,

lit up by fables I once mistook for skin,

still waiting to burn.

Will you strike the match?

Participant's Poems