Combustion

 
How such a rich forest of emotions grew up overnight, I'll never know. Without care and without tenderness, all around me it grew. It was like a scene from a movie, only it was real and I was in wonder. I was no jaded audience member whining about the CGI. It was as real as the pin-pricks of a freshly-picked rose's thorns. And just as easily as it sprang up, it cried out for water. The shallow roots of the tender plants weren't strong enough to hold them over until the next rain. The fields grew tired and wilted, cried out and died a drawn-out death. 

I knew it was all too good to be true. Things like that don't happen to me. Love like that doesn't just come into my life. It was over before I realized it, before I even had a chance to enjoy it. It was almost like a dream, like I had simply imagined it. I was left with the things that had grown around me — trees almost as tall as the sky itself and undergrowth that was once flowering and beautiful — but they were brown and brittle.

Anger is associated with fire for a good reason. They are both destructive and flare up in a moment. Right now, I'm the angriest I've ever been. It is a bitter anger, a destructive conflagration spreading through my soul. I am setting fire to fields I never planted because they remind me of what I lost. The fire creates its own wind, and it rushes past me as I set the trees ablaze, their embers racing to the stars. Instead of feeling loss, I intend to feel nothing.

  
Fire is the only thing that can cleanse me. I've tried bleach. I've tried not breathing. But I'm still here, holding reminders of what was. I've shut off the hope machines, bandaged the wounds, fled to the quietest places I can find. But the beating of my heart told me it wasn't enough. I had to set the world on fire. So I am. In the night, do you see me from afar, menace in my hands, eyes glazed over, reflecting my burning world? 

Vast fields of emotion are enveloped by flames, charring as quickly as they grew up. You can almost hear their plaintive cries as the fire ravishes them. The sounds they make are like a whimper and a roar and a whoosh. And they are gone. I stand in naked fields once again, enrobed in soot and smoke and the warmth of their burning. I came naked into this world. It makes sense I'll leave the same. 

There is great beauty in love. There is great treachery in losing love. There is anger when the skies hide the rain. When there is nothing left to hope for, what does one do? I don't know what others do, but I turned my world to black fields of carbon. I painted my world black. In anger, I erased all but the one thing that needed to be erased — myself. My heart is still beating, but it knows it's over. Yes, my life is over. I will never love again as I have loved. I will never hurt again as I have hurt. Everything from this day forward will be living in the shadow of what was. There is no more now. There is no more tomorrow. God may keep this shell alive, but what's inside expired in the fire, coughed as the smoke grew thick, and choked on its own burning. 

Fire is a hungry thing. There is plenty to burn here. Lots of stories. Lots of emotions. Lots of little things that would take a lifetime to forget otherwise. Big things, too. Their hulls will smolder for years. But there's one thing about fire I forget as I walk through this desert of black. Out of the seemingly vaporized soil, life will renew itself, grasping with even greater tenacity toward the sky. Like hundreds of thousands of little miracles, green things will appear with the rain, carpeting the dead ground I walk on with their beauty. And there will be flowers. And little shrubs. Trees. All sorts of flora and fauna will return. Fire is simply fertilizer, and they will grow harder and stronger than before. The irony is strong as I realize this. What I burn today will return. And better than before.