I am the Pyre

I would set myself on fire for you.

Not for the warmth, you’ve never needed that, but just to watch the flames lick the hollows of my skin. I’d close my eyes and imagine the burn to be nothing more than the ache of wanting.

I’d strike the match with my teeth. Fuel it with my hair, my clothes, the letters I never sent. Let my cities blacken and curl like old parchment. Let my oceans of tears boil down to salt. I’d do it just to see the flames flicker in your eyes, that cruel, beautiful recognition. I’d snap my bones like kindling and dream of you all the while. I’d pull arteries, open veins – and I have.

I gut myself over and over to make you want me. It never works. Instead, I am left bleeding and torn, and tired.

You are the only wound that never scabs over. I pick at it when I’m lonely. I run my tongue across its ragged edges. Love gone septic. You are the bruise I can't stop pressing, the needle I swallow every morning just to feel something sharp. Is fear the hand that holds the knife or the throat that bears itself to the blade? 

I can barely hear my own strangled heartbeat.

I would let you ruin me. If it meant you’d stay, I would. Carve your name into the marrow of my ribs, if it means you’ll remember the shape of me. Take everything. Take it all. Hollow me out if it means you’ll fill me with something other than this agony. 

But you won’t. 

And so I burn. And burn. And burn.

Vedika Sengupta