What Lingers Here

8/22/2021

What lingers here in my brokenness and utter inward hopelessness?

It is not that I have no hope,

But I have hope for so many things that shouldn’t be hoped.

As the moth loves the licking flame,

I grew to love your heat

That singed my wings and hungrily ate away at my heart.

Passionate twisting and turning of our lives

Was too intense for my deteriorating wings.

How so like a moth to fall in love with those wicked flames,

Though no more than a candle to those who looked at us.

You would have let me dance with the flames

Till I had withered away to nothing but ashes.

Oh, the bewitching tension between a moth and her flame.

She cannot be turned away for the intense passion she has for him,

Yet he does nothing to push her away nor preserve her in her delicate state.

He devours her without thought to the last of her ashes

Ending her ethereal dance amongst the flames.

What lingers here in the ashes… my ashes?

Shall the Phoenix rise once more

Only to be engulfed in his fiery blaze again

And return to her eternal bed of ashes?

I shall be his moth no longer only to make my bed in the dust of the earth.

Freedom from the flame and victory at last

Even in my lonesome sway.