on fire, and who we've become.

i called you an old flame
to a new friend
who has never heard your name out of my lips
before

an old flame

it makes you sound like a candlestick affair

simple, small
a dinner for two
glowing dimly on
the outline of a person i could love
or did you just flicker away?

i should have called you a furnace

deep in the belly of the beast
heating everything up from the inside
thawing out the winter of my bones
defrosting a human heart
we weren't sure was there
until it started beating

i should have called you a bonfire

fueling the drunken nights
the summer nights
when everything was good
but your warmth made it better
more alive

i should have called you a wildfire

taking out everything in your path
swallowing up all the cities we dreamed for ourselves
in one great gulp
raging, as one does, until everything you touch
changed

(i lived through the night
but
for better or for worse, i'm not the same).

S.

{Photo: Rita Ji Flickr}

relapse .

you've been seeping back in
spreading through my veins
a sickness

first in dreams
then in faces i let myself forget
                         
then calls, too blurry-eyed to see the screen
           yet somehow typing out your number
                                                                       muscle memory
old texts dug up from centuries past
a graveyard of memories, excavated — they should be dead
                                                                           but somehow

somehow

it's you again.

you're back.

S.

{Photo: Angela Kim Flickr}