::To Bursting::

  They say the world will end in fire. A ball of divine rage will fall and burn us all down. The big bad wolf says he'll blow my house down and he's happy to do it with a smile. Disasters can be polite. They can hold you close and make promises while they keep their fingers crossed in their pockets. They can love you today, promise tomorrow, and then let the whole world around you burst into fire and politely forget to pull you out of the blaze. I've always been burning. It's always been burning here. A wire runs through my hothouse flower. I never feel warm enough.
   The body heats under pressure. It's pressed between the pages of tenderness and curiosity. Tenderness writes the line between closeness and lies. An unspoken tightrope of tension stalks the moments between every kiss, every silence, every proclamation. The shadow of a smile says I'm hiding something. The admittance of the only and absolute makes me think you like to play. I don't like disasters no matter how polite they are on your doorstep.
   They take their hats off and wipe their feet so well mannered before they lay themselves out on your bed long enough for you to want them to be yours. I can't always tell the difference between a disaster, a dream, or a definite. They all attract me the same way. They all dare me to jump into them. And I do.
I jump when things are that perfect temperature between what feels right, seems wrong, and can't be discerned no matter how close it happens to lay. If I were Eve I would have taken the apple easily. I would have left Adam for the snake and never looked back. If I were Red Riding Hood I'd have given the wolf my basket and invited him to feast on my insides because I have a fascination with anything I can be tempted by.
     I dream of a love that can keep me safe. Create a warmth that envelops me and feels honest and real. Real enough for me to truly see it as it lays itself out in offering. I hate the fall, but have a tendency to choose the apple. I hate the bite back, but have found myself drawn to the sharpest of teeth. I am aware. I am my own snake. Always watching, always waiting to tempt myself onto the tightrope. My fear is my poison and my antidote.
    I know how to love but never learned to trust. I like the myth that builds beneath the skin, between the sheets, under the touch. I let myself fall under the pressurized words and fingers of my disaster, my dream, and my definite. I spread the coolness, I seduce the wandering heart, I create this chain. This chain that binds you to me. My grip on all things is tenuous. Always ready to slip away if the fingers become teeth, and the dream bursts into fire and politely forgets to pull me out. I love uneasily though I keep my own tenderness steady. I play the hands I'm good at, and manipulate the weak parts when I have to. All of this to avoid damage, but it is too late. We're swimming now. We're swimming in our own fires we don't care to put out.
   This is how love begins. We're always burning and bare. Afraid to commit, to be close, to believe and yet we can't resist. We want a taste of that apple, we want to feel the that we are on the edge of disaster at any moment and give into it as it lays itself out before us. Disaster buried beneath a body, a body that rises and rides itself on top of us. We want to burn. Burn out our dreams, our fears, the voices in our heads that say he's hiding something, he's not for you, this can't be real. And we do. We open the door. We marvel at how politely he strides into our lives. Marvel at how it feels like the space he takes up in your bed was made for him.
    I look down from the tightrope as the net burns away. I know I'm going to jump. The hissing fear is calls me to tension. My body spins the hoops and reasons why the thin rope of separation is the only way to stay safe. I hear and see all the reasons why I might be a fool. A fool alone. A fool. I know I'm going to jump..and I do.