After the curtains went up in flames I moved on to the old photo albums,
watched as the edges of my three-year-old birthday party
burned into blackness. The breakfast smoked on the kitchen table,
oatmeal scorched so sweet it overtook the smell of cinnamon.
In my bedroom I touched the match to everything I loved,
wishing I could do the same to every memory needing to be erased.
Burn me tender, burn me clean.
I want bones full of grill marks; this heart was made of grey matter
before my brain even found its way into the picture.
I bring home men who smoke cigarettes so hard they inhale regret
twice as fast as air and take me to bed with ashes falling through
our pressed-together mouths.
In a past life I hope I was a phoenix just so it’s made certain
that I was something better before being reincarnated
into this wasted body that would only turn into a pile of cinders
if I finally got up the courage to douse it with lighter fluid.
In the bathroom I stopped just before destroying the tub-
wanted to strip away its porcelain down to the exoskeleton,
but then I remembered your legs wrapped around mine
as we sat there together under the running water.
Strange, how my love for flame is eclipsed
only by my love for self-destruction through continuing to remember you
when all I want is to erase you & I so hard
even our useless hearts leave soot in their wake.