The Smoke

 

The Smoke

 

What gives me pause

is the fact that

you’ve read every clause,

gone over all the lines

and no doubt taken your time

and everything is still fine.

 

Your advances

so abrasive

and wholly invasive

have rendered my evasive efforts

to little more than hapless ambition.

You pursue with conviction

as if your assertiveness

is not at all the contradiction

to every warning one should heed.

 

Our needs

could not be more

different in speed

with even a year’s head start

and the truly confusing part

is this doesn’t even startle you.

 

This is quite possibly

the ever present part of you

and yet I still can’t reconcile

with the wiles of a mystery

that apparently need not be solved.

 

We revolve around the very

discomfort we willingly impart

to each other’s heart

and the end is often sacrificed

for the sake of the recurrent start:

 

There is a fire

and the air is too hot

but this is where you stake your plot.

 

I am on fire

yet through the smoke

you wrench and vice me

but you’re the one who chokes.

 

I am the fire.

Scorched earth and fresh embers.

You hold on tight

and ignore your blisters.

 

Perhaps the perception of misery

is the unsolvable mystery

that expectation falls victim to

even when all is seen vividly.

 

Our nature cannot conceivably coincide

with any concept of tame.

Even before you knew my name,

you found yourself

drawn to this flame

with no wariness to accompany the wonder.

 

Any sensible means

to what is clearly seen are wrought

beneath a bliss you’ve relentlessly fought

to fashion as you hoped it to be

and to this day,

one constant question.

 

The thought like ash still smoldering:

 

Why choose to be the moth

that hovers so low over me?

 

Why die in love?

 

With me?

 

Devin Joseph Metz

5.12.21