Poetic Paragraphs

Burn

I said she meant the world to me.

It was dark, moonlight pouring in through opened windows, wind lacing the air with the smell of spring, and I told her she meant the world.

I didn't think much of it at the time.

I had tossed them into the air with a quiet voice, feeling as if they meant nothing, just cotton-candy sweetness without any nutritional value. They would melt in her mouth and disappear.

I didn't feel the weight of the words, how they held down the corners of my mind, covering up the budding relationship's growth in my head.

I didn't really think they would come true.

Because I'd said them softly, under my breath, more air than words. I didn't think they would mean anything.

It was another whispered nothing in the ear, another bundle of words, tinder to the fire of a tender relationship.

I thought it would burn up, burn out, and I could scrap the ashes of that sentence.

I was wrong.

The relationship grew from a tiny flame into a roaring fire, painting my vision red.

I still see stars.

It burned through the tinder, the meaningless words, the whispered nothings in the middle of night. It took and took until it had burned through the head-in-the-clouds feeling of elation, and I started to feed it my heart and soul to keep it going.

Those burn a lot slower, but I gave everything. The budding relationship started pushing at the denial in my mind, trying to get out, trying to force its way through and show me what I was getting into.

It's easier to pull out a sprout than uproot an oak tree.

But I didn't notice.

(She was the fire in my heart, light in my life, and she burned through my soul until I was nothing more than fumes.)

Because that's what they never tell you. Light takes energy, takes burning, and I burned in my existence every day I stayed with her.

Fire needs fuel, and she ate my heart from my chest.

(Is it better to burn up or burn out?)

She was the flame without fuel, and I was the ashes left behind.

When I tried to throw out the burnt pieces of my soul, let new life spring from the old, I found those words buried underneath everything.

You are the world to me.

They had stood the pressure-cooker of time and compacted into diamonds, and they sparkled, glittered from the corners of my mind, catching the light of every new relationship I struck up and shining brighter.

I couldn't see any new fire because of the glare.

So I went blind.

I still can't believe those words are the ones that remain with me.

You are the world to me.

The world?

I never understood what that meant. This earth is filled with billions of people, of plants and animals and insects and air.

She was made of flesh and blood, of carbon and hydrogen and all the other things. Her soul lay loosely under her skin.

She was one part sane, drowned out by nine parts crazy. The windows to her soul were covered by the peaceful glassiness of a mind with no thoughts.

I'd often marveled at the reflection of the stars in her eyes.

Now I know why.

But this outlier girl with the starry eyes and flame-filled heart became the world to me.

When she burned out, our relationship no more than the smoke in the air, the world stopped moving.

The earth stopped turning.

The diamonds in my mind blinded my eyes, and I stopped seeing other people.

Because years ago in a room saturated with darkness, I'd said she meant the world to me.

And now, fifteen years later in a mind filled with gloom, I know I spoke the truth.