Open Casket Affinity

The fire he sees
Is brighter than any other he's seen before
It's brilliant and bright and it burns deep and red and all at once he's in love.

It's only then he sees the girl it belongs to.

And then he reaches out;
His fingers dance over the flames;
But
The fire dulls and so does she

And she
Was nothing like the grim expression she wore;
She was life itself.
She was living, breathing, brilliant life
It was just a shame that she was no longer living.

But she breathed
She breathed and spoke and walked and slept
And she looked at him
Both with those lovely green eyes
And
With her fire burning behind her
And
Still
She did not live.

But she kissed him
And her kisses ached
The burning intensity which she gave them with
The fire both in her hair and in her kisses reminded him that she was burning
She was a flame
His flame
But in the same sense she was cold and not here and not so much broken as nothing at all.

Each time he saw her
He felt he was seeing a ghost

The ghost burned a dull flame

The fire's final whispers were like a sad sonnet to him;
This dead girl he loved was its ashes
After a slow path of destruction and recklessness
She lay in its wake
The ashes were the distance in her eyes;
The smoke her lies that slip her tongue unnoticed.

He felt he was staring straight in to a coffin
Her open casket;
And he was in love
With the flames
Sometimes forgetting the girl they belonged to.

The way she looks at him;
Wordless
She tells him
Let me go
And love me
Please
Love
Me

But then she's dancing all at once
And hardly moving at all
But the fire is burning
It's burning again and all at once she's both alive and living again;
And he see's the love in her eyes and all at once he understands

The city

She's gone

And she is in love.

poem by Dayna Mortimore
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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