She Burns Clean
nothing survives her,
no wreckage left to sift when she is done,
just scorched-bare ground and the trace of her perfume,
a man who cannot remember how to run.
She pressed against me like summer asphalt,
all heat and pressure at the seam,
kissed like combustion, like the air caught fire,
and I woke up smoke where I had been.
I watched her dress the morning after, backlit gold,
denim sliding over thighs still warm from mine,
something careless in the way she moved,
like she’d set this kind of fire a thousand times.
She left her lipstick ringing my throat like evidence,
a stain from collarbone down to my jaw,
and I’d let her do it again, let her do it tomorrow—
I’m kneeling at the altar asking for more.
The burning is religion. I’m begging for the flame.
I walked in knowing I’d come out unframed.
There is nothing reasonable about the way I want this,
nothing measured in the way my pulse responds,
she burns clean and I am kindling, stacked and willing,
waiting for her mouth to strike me into dark.