Where the Fire Meets the Sky

The world was on fire long before she left,
but somehow it burned differently with her in it—
warmer, gentler, almost like hope.
Now it’s just flame again,
and I’m the one standing in the ashes,
wondering why it still hurts to breathe.

She’s everywhere.
In the mornings when my eyes first open,
in the evenings when silence settles beside me,
in places she never even touched.
It’s wicked, really—
how someone who’s gone can still feel
closer than the living.

I never meant to fall in love.
God knows I tried not to.
I saw the danger in her smile,
felt the storm beneath her skin,
but desire makes fools of even the strongest hearts.
And mine was never strong to begin with.

My friends tell me to let her go,
to loosen my grip on what’s already slipped through my fingers.
“Set her free,” they say.
“As if freedom ever stopped love from breaking you.”
They don’t understand.
Letting her go doesn’t quiet the ache—
it just makes me bleed more quietly.

Because the truth is cruel:
wide awake or dreaming,
she’s never here.
Yet I still hold on to the ghost of her,
to the memory of a fire that once warmed me
and now burns straight through my ribs.

What a wicked game,
to make me feel so alive
and then take it all away.
What a wicked thing,
to teach me how to dream again
and then leave me waking up alone.

Still—
somewhere in the fragile, foolish part of me,
a hope lingers.
A whisper.
A trembling prayer.

Maybe love circles back.
Maybe some hearts are tied together
in ways we can’t see.
Maybe the fire will guide her home,
or the sky will carry her name back to mine.

I don’t know.
I can’t know.
Only heaven knows.

And so I stand here—
half in the fire,
half in the dream—
waiting for whatever miracle or ruin
love has saved for me.

by Onnaya