When you come around, I will be the spark to a fire.

Reaching to try to place the best, glittering parts of myself in a million different places.

Even though I've shed the gold sheen, I hold that blistering heat deeply.

And yet, I’ll submerge myself, bathing in the warmth of your voice.

Boiling my brain until I can’t remember why I'm so hot in the first place.

Then, on an October night, I will be flecks of rain on a car window.

Flowing too freely, unable to keep myself from dripping down into you.

You won’t catch me for fear of getting soaked through, never being able to dry off.

Instead I’ll splash into cloudy puddles and collapse in on my own reflection.

Losing any sense of structure, all I've done to collect myself is wasted.

Now when I wake up, I will be vaporized into thin air spiraling upwards,

desperately trying to grip onto any surface and touch you as long as I can.

I’m so much weaker, flattened, spread so thin, unrecognizable.

It isn't clear, when I look around, whether my own heat became too much

or if I've been trying so hard not to freeze over, that I've just forgotten to breathe.

It’s all over and I can be found suffocating deep under the ground.

You’ve buried me violently, fast enough to keep the guilt off your shoulders.

But it would never, could never be fast enough to wick the regret from my mind.

I’m left soaking in my own shell, hardened to concrete and unbroken earth.

My lack of breath catches up to me, a final gasp detaching our past from my future.