May 6, 2017

We knew it was burning. By then, we’d become master arsonists, all but living for the moment when that first flame exploded at the tip of the match. You, divorced. Me, tattooed and pierced. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how I see you more clearly now that it’s been three years since we’ve spoken. Let’s talk about the things that I’ll never forget. How you came crawling from a wreckage not unlike my own. How you never stopped believing in the weight of what you’d lost. How, unlike me, you seemed to shake the guilt so lightly. Not my fault, you told me. I didn’t leave. But it wouldn’t always be true. Autumn, to me, will always be fire season, the landscape of my childhood erupting yearly in smoke. November, right before the winter plunged us into darkness, our love caught fire, and you decided you’d grown tired of such exposing light. But me, I stood there in the thick of it, watching it collapse beneath its own weight.