When you understand fire

Sometimes a fire can burn uncontrollably

Like a story

Frantically written down before it is forgotten

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I remember collecting kindling on the beach at night

Hoping to capture an ember that didn't listen to the night

adjusting/re-phrasing itself in the process.

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I saw with my own eyes

A serpent slurp the sky

Uncoiling and coiling; illuminating

Puffing out its chest

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I heard a hiss

Coming from brassy depths

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There were chairs

Swallowed by night sky

Engraved with wrinkles that lapped at our backs as we sat

Burned and Battered

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Tattooed with paragraphs, aged like fine wine

And

Solidified like pottery in a kiln

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But we still laughed and talked

Letting words roll off our tongues

Uncoiling and coiling

Frantically creating sentences for the receiver to grasp

Like the ember grasping at the kindling I collected

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Before

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We sat there

Burning marshmallows,

Burning sticks,

Burning...

Until we could not burn anymore

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Sometimes a fire can burn uncontrollably like a story

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But can end the same way it started.