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"Up in Flames"
When you said you’d stay, did you really mean it? Or was it some ploy to make me feel important, when I was really nothing to you? You held me in your arms, always so strong and secure and whispered words that danced in my ears like a song, lively yet quiet and comforting. You could have held me, loved me all you wanted, and I wouldn’t have fought. Your love was a cage, but I threw away the lock.
It’s funny how it’s so cold after a fire. The red flames dance in the air to an unknown rhythm. They are free, flowing carelessly about the midnight sky covering the stars with their dangerous brilliance.
You were fire. I was the midnight sky.
At first you complimented me, a nice diversion from the constancy of black and diamonds. You lit up all that I had built below me, my entire world that I hovered over like a protective blanket. You jumped and leaped and urged me to do the same, but I was confined to who I was. Everything was perfect, interesting, lively, and exciting.
I could see the way you spread, inflated, began to cover more of me and then even more. Your flames changed to yellows, oranges, blues. Your heat would not cease. What was once careless is now a dangerous, threatening tyranny. And I have no choice but to let you suffocate me.
Everything I love below me turned to ash as you left each monument of myself in complete turmoil. Nothing was recognizable.
I was just your canvas. A pretty thing to overpower and show your brilliance on. Your arms smeared down me, rough and unforgiving. Dripping like paint down the world below me, you used me for a game. The colors of your fire were a collage, oddly mixed together to create a beautiful, lethal mixture down into the depths of my heart.
Piercing screams. Low life moans. Calling out to me, begging me to stop. And I am forced to merely watch as you hold me with unforgiving tenacity.
And it’s all my fault.
I have thrown away the lock.
But now you are through; your damage is complete. You have left me, staring at the massacre you molded single-handedly. A massacre that is all my fault.
The diamonds have faded against the smoke that rises up, clogging my memory of what really happened. No longer is my simplicity beautiful, my black has turned to a mixture of leftover reds and blues and a murky gray.
And then with a gust of wind, the heat is swallowed with an indecisive chill that spread throughout me, as if cleaning out all that I was.
But like a silly child refusing to accept the crushing reality, I wonder wistfully, if ever for a moment, you really loved me.
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This article has 13 comments.
sleeplessdreamer, this is beautifully written!! I love the imageries that danced across my mind as I read this. :)
I agree with redfer that it should be the key and not the lock, but that's just a minor detail, hahaha.
I have two questions. Is the low life below the sky was her conscience? Where were her family and friends? I imagine that if she was slowly self-destruct and being destroyed, her family and friends would have come to aid or advise her to get away from him. But then this is a metaphor for the lovers, so who cares about the family and friends, hahaha.
So I sort of having a problem with the first paragraph. I mean it's lovely and it does relate to the lovers for a reason, but I don't think it relates to the flame and the midnight sky. I guess you meant it as an introduction to the metaphor but I don't think your metaphor needs any. The first paragraph compares them to a cage and a prisoner (don't know what the girl is compared to, really) and in itself, it's great for another story. I just don't think it is necessary for this one. You could definitely write another one base on this paragraph because your writing skill is beautiful :)
Anyways, I love the metaphor. It's brilliant! :D
P.S. Your second paragraph is a better introduction!
This is a beautiful piece of writing. How long did it take to write?