Controlled Fire
My name, on your tongue, is a spark that won't go out.
It's the taste of salt left by the waves as they recede,
the moment before your breath changes rhythm and betrays everything.
Imagine my back as a map your hands
traverse with eyes closed, finding a new border each time.
The texture of my skin is wet silk under warm rain,
and every one of my shivers is a dance step I teach you without moving.
When I read aloud, my voice is a dark velvet
that wraps around your wrists, a warm current rising through your veins.
The words I choose are smooth stones I warm in my palm
before placing them, one by one, on your sternum.
You count each syllable as an extra heartbeat, one less wait to endure.
Between one stanza and the next, I leave a silence shaped
like your desire. That is where you lose yourself, that is where you begin to burn.
I don't need to touch you. I look at you, and where my gaze rests
your skin remembers being light, before it was body,
and begins to vibrate again with that ancient hunger.
This is my power: to ignite fire with the wind.
To blow on the ember of a glance, of a barely audible sigh,
and see the flame blaze in your eyes, in your hands,
in that precise point where thought yields and blood commands.
You read me to the last line, and you follow me, atom by atom,
all the way to ash. 