If You're A Moth Then I'm The Fire | A Poem

What a strange thing,

To realize that I was not alone in the dark.

It was only quiet

Because you too were walking through the garden upon naked feet,

Tiptoeing down the narrow pathways with me.

How long had I been walking in your company?

Was it months, or years we had been trodding these same cobbled stones?

How many times have our fingers brushed the same railing

As rain fell around us,

Cascading down from a gray sky?

All those nights that thunder rattled the cage of our bones 

And we were no more than a few feet from one another.

Like spirits haunting the same mansion,

Unseen and unheard.

Oh what a lonely thing it was

To sit on the cold steel of that bench

Next to the stagnant waters of my subconscious mind,

Watching more memories drown themselves in acts of passionless self immolation.

What a curse it was,

That brought you to me.

You were like a moth

Attracted to a light you thought was comforting warmth

But after getting near and close to me,

You soon observed the peril of my solar mite

And found your wings scorched and burned

Leaving behind the ashes of your pure soul

With the receding storm of my iridescent flares.

I could try to rip my leathery wings from my own bloodied shoulders

But what good would such a gesture do

When your beautiful wings now lie in ashen ruin

At my smoldering feet.

The garden around us is billowing smoke

And ash rains from the sky like snow.

All I once wished for now burns in flames

As I stand above you in ignorant defiance of my own selfish

Obstructive efforts.

The damage is done and I feel lost

There is nothing more to say.

I could weep,

But truly, what would that do?

Trust has forsaken my heart

And this turbulent flame,

This beautifully violent fist of self destructive nature

Is not something easily abandoned.

So I wander now

As my own garden burns about my barren heels.

I wish that I could stop the spread

But there are little fires in every corner,

And I feel lost among the tapestry of the garden maze impetuously aflame.

Once an art piece, reflective of my soul,

Now an empty shell, barring for the world my rotting corpses buried in shallow graves beneath the flower beds at the feet of the garden wall.

There are no skeletons to hide

Because it is all still freshly decaying

And I will find no rest for my weary bones.