you used to call me blaze

i wish you'd use me as a match,

strike me against all the rough surfaces,

sandpaper,

the sidewalk,

your own edges.

you used to call me blaze,

so why don't come play with fire?

you're a sagittarius, but i could show you a fire sign.

i wish i ignited you

the way you still ignite me.

start a controlled burn inside you.

be your calefaction for eternity.

i didn't yearn to be an arsonist, or a spectacle,

but rather, that careful combustion

to cauterize what

keeps bleeding in you.

some fires have purpose,

and know when to stop.

i wanted to burn your fears into bedrock,

your doubts

that were already smoldering when i found you,

kindling for years before my name ever touched your mouth.

i wanted to scorch the fact that anybody was there before me.

i fucking had you.

but you needed to be taken

the way i needed to be chosen.

i thought if i stood by you,

as close as you'd let me,

if i burned long enough,

you'd feel the difference

between destruction and

warmth that stays,

because throughout your life

you needed someone who stayed.

i'm not blind to your trauma,

you wear them like scorch marks.

i'd sear my flesh with a branding iron

if i could carry it for you instead.

but i failed you.

i was ignition without proof,

words that evaporated before

they could catch a flame.

you asked for action,

but kept yourself far enough away

that any step forward looked like threat.

i would have crossed states,

proved that maps are flammable,

collapsed the distance into ash.

i was ready for conflagration,

to turn anything that stood between us

into sodom and gomorrah,

the kind of heat that alters geography permanently.

but you're afraid to be calcified,

the way the heart hardens after trauma,

hope turning brittle like clay or old bones.

you misunderstood me.

you mistook fierceness for danger,

devotion for smoke.

you told me a hundred times

you didn't want

hi and goodbye.

what you never saw

was how permanent my waiting already was,

how long i stood in the fire

refusing to evacuate.

i held a fire extinguisher

the way you held my heart,

with a pinky finger.

i wanted to orchestrate a pyre for your doubts,

send them off to valhalla.

i wanted to incinerate the voices

and cremate the lies that

told you closeness always ends in ruin,

or that you need to know something's worth it

before you even try.

but fires need oxygen,

the way i needed you,

and you kept choosing distance,

starving the heat,

thinking survival's an ending.

now i'm sifting through the aftermath,

where everything is quiet and wrong,

the ground still warm like your skin once was.

i was a fire

that never became itself,

no explosion,

no closure,

just a man

standing in ash

where devotion stood

knowing he was willing

to burn for you,

and you never believed

the fire was meant for healing.