The Fire

I can still taste the salt of your long-lost, faded lips.

Your face I once held in the palm of my hands.

I approached your lips like I would a cup of hot tea

and burnt my heart and soul at the fire, the fire

raging, blazing inside you.

Ages ago we could have walked away

we could have run away from Fate

and hid where nobody would find us.

We did not, and I can still feel

the texture of your parched lips.

I know now that my best years are gone.

There once was a chance of happiness,

we died before it could take shape.

More the fools we were not to heed the signs.

This happiness was too real to last.

Fate was jealous. The Gods were jealous.

We paid. You died. Effaced from this world.

You had the fire none of the others had.

Only you could kindle my soul the way you did.

The others, the others put weights

when you showed me how to soar

how to soar with the flares engulfing us.

They could not feel the way you did.

They were posthumous attempts to revive you.

But you could not be resuscitated.

My friends, they wouldn't understand.

They still don't know. They will never know.

For them you are still living, somewhere.

And that memory has kept me going,

has fed my sad love and longing for your soft lips.

I know my best years are gone,

And I wouldn't want them back.

No, I wouldn't want them back.

But looking at that worn-out picture

for the hundredth time today,

my heart and soul, now a wasteland,

are still burning with the thought of you.

I'd give my last years to have you back.

I'd give my last years for a single day with you.

To kiss your lips once again, and for ever.

To see your smile. To be consumed entirely in the fire.

The fire, your fire is in me now.