We are strangers here,

living entangled here

within this monstrous house.

I don’t recognize your

footsteps as you blaze

your way through empty rooms

and you don’t know me anymore.

You don’t even see me standing here.

We are living with ghosts,

our silly versions of the past.

Our life made up of nothing but

misconceptions of the type of

Love we thought we had.

The air is pregnant, bursting with the questions

we can’t admit are there.

You hold me

and I laugh.

Another day that leaves us wanting.

I move my hands over my body

feeling the fissures that were created by yours.

Over time you hollowed me out.

Like water on stone,

your love eroded me from within.

It was always too much, you see,

taking small pieces of you each time

that we lay entwined in our bed

drawing pictures of what love was supposed to look like.

I felt it sleeping inside me. The fire. I felt it roiling and rumbling its way throughout my body, from the tips of my toes until it found its release shooting out of my fingertips. My eyes. My legs and my skin. 

I also thought that I could handle it. I thought that I could control the brute strength of it if I concentrated on keeping the heat within me. 

But I was too naive in my recklessness and proud in my independence. 

In this moment I knew what was happening inside me. I chose to ignore the heat as I felt it building up until the fire threatened to burn its way out of each one of my edges.

His screams increased, banging loudly against my ear drums causing tears to spill down my cheeks and land upon my bruised skin. I felt the fire rise, slamming against the walls of my body. A war raged within me. 

It only takes a moment to decide whether you're a good guy or a bad one. 

I looked up into his eyes that had betrayed me again and again with words and with actions. I felt my skin start to boil and I gave into the rage. The fire was an animal battering itself against the confines of my skin until with a horrifying scream it broke free from its cage and engulfed us both in flames until my arms were empty and all that was left of him was ash.