She lies, unforgiving, at my feet, heaving.

Her dry, brittle brush is burning green and blue flames.

Her voice, rasping in thirst, is beseeching.

“Why do you look at me with a stranger’s eyes?”

I turn my gaze away, repulsed by her neediness.

“Do not forsake me now!” she shrieks, feeding the fire with her powerful voice.  “Do not remove yourself from what you see!  For you are the one who lit the match, you are the one who stokes the coals and keeps me alive!  You are mine!”

I sit beside her with nothing left to lose and hold my hands out to her.  Slowly, deliberately, she forms blisters on my skin.  I watch them sink into me, scarring my bones.  When she is satisfied with her work, she slinks away, leaving me with the pieces of her she has embedded in me.

Her memories rush through me.  I fight for her, rejoice over her, live with her, forget her and lose her simultaneously.  I feel how broken she is.

I am doubled over in her pain, heaving with her sobs, when I become aware of the fire that is consuming me.

She has set me aflame from within, and I cannot put it out.

We stand together now, she and I, roaring out our passionate refrain.

“You are mine!”

“She is mine!”

“We will not forsake you now!”

And so we live, aflame, in our writhing land, and wait.