Desire

The warmth her fires flung me, fades and glows
Unlike my snow white world that lurks in nights
Like these, that freeze my flames, that twist and bite
These hands that tremble matches burning low.

The heat her hearthstone clutched then is grown old
As hills from which my wood, now cut and split,
Is stolen from. Now stacked, my stove is lit
And dances steps toward its ice-cold coals.

And yet we light new fires. Flames must read
These looks in lover's eyes, these anguished twists
That burn towards abandonment, and wish
That love lie more in minds than in done deeds.
Desire, even delicate, has to bleed
As fire burns to ash the wood it needs.

Nik Habermel, January 1997