Mat Gilson

You couldn’t hurt me! Two sticks propped up against one another fall down unless you drive them hard into the dirt, and even then they crumble once they are set on fire. If I were a tool, kindling, for your wretched heart’s fire, that fire which will consume the Earth, at least you could have let me know. It’s the expectation, really, of use. Of course I will be used up. What has been my body, what beside this vessel of need, and strain? Of course I will be burned up. I am scared to change to ashes, but I will change. You couldn’t hurt me any more than I have hurt myself.

Now, in the morning, I am sorry for what I said. I’m sorry that you are always wretched and I am always the ash; Of course I am the fire, for a while, too. Of course I am vile and lonely. But when I pulled away from you I was relieved at the lack of contact. The intensity of the force between us was severed, and diluted by the air. I started running from you in slow motion. Looking back, and waving, and smiling my strained smile, horrified of the silence between when I am saying something and you are saying something back. I am shoveling sand into the pit of our straining voices echoing off of the walls of this cavern, pouring worthless, grating sand out of my mouth, my nostrils. Now, farther away, I feel the size of you behind me, heavy behind me in the distorted mirror of my image of you. You were on fire.